Extremely slow transfer speeds

[ISantus]

I recently set up my first FreeNAS system but have been experiencing issues. If I restart my entire NAS system I can usually get transfer speeds of 80-100 megabytes per second. If I transfer larger files (more than 50GB) or if the system has sat unused, or I have recently transferred one file at 25gb and try to transfer another, I get transfer speeds of 400-700 KB/s. EXTREMELY SLOW! I have tried to make sure the HDDs never go into sleep or low power mode, SMART is off, but beyond that I am still learning FreeNAS. Don't kill me for being so new to this stuff. A lot of this stuff is above my head but I am trying to learn and consider myself pretty tech savy. I have built many gaming machines over the years, built several HTPCs and now my first NAS.

Here are the hardware specs:

• motherboard make and model: ASRock C2550D4I Minit ITX server
• CPU make and model: On board Intel Avoton C2550 Quad core processor
• RAM quantity: Crucial 16gb DDR3 ECC unbuffered 1600
• hard drives, quantity, model numbers, and RAID configuration: 2 x 1 TB Seagate 7200RPM HDD. I cant remember Raid setup but it is redundant 2 drive
• hard disk controllers: IBM M1015 8Channel PCI-E X8 SATA Raid
• network cards: on ASRock motherboard

I am transferring over a wired connection through my home router and to a switch. Let me know what additional questions you have to try to help this naive soul out.

 

[Joseph Lennemann]

What type of switch are you using? Also, what type of share are you using? Examples would be SMB or Apple share. There are others, but I only use those so I cannot remember the others.

 

[ISantus]

It is an SMB share. I am having a hard time sharing over wired connection from a Windows 10 machine. I have not tried shares from other devices on the network. Perhaps I should to at least narrow down if it is in fact the FreeNas server.

Switch is Netgear GS108 ProSafe 8 Port Gigabit switch

 

[Joseph Lennemann]

Just to make sure; how many connections do you have coming from your router to your switch? I'd like to rule out a loop.

 

[ISantus]

Just to make sure; how many connections do you have coming from your router to your switch? I'd like to rule out a loop.

I think I understand your question.

I have one line coming from the router to the switch. All 8 ports on the switch are occupied by various hardware devices in my home theater rack (ie, AV receiver, Blu Ray Payer).

 

[Joseph Lennemann]

Great. What device are you using to test your transfer speed? A laptop or desktop computer?

 

[ISantus]

Desktop computer. I am also currently performing a test from a Macbook Pro on wifi. It is transferring well over 50 mb/s. Transferring a 6gb file in 6 minutes. Perhaps a windows 10 issue?

 

[Joseph Lennemann]

Windows sucks when it comes to SMB shares. I can never get mine to go over 3 mb/s on my wifes laptop but on my Macbook it's lighting fast. I was curious if you were using a laptop, because when Windows laptops are on battery the default setting is to reduce performance on the wireless LAN card.

 

[ISantus]

Ill have to keep testing with the Macbook but it looks like I have narrowed it down to the Windows machine, at least for now

 

[Joseph Lennemann]

Want to see really fast speeds, disable SMB and enable Apple shares.

 

[ISantus]

Cant share from windows machine on Apple shares, correct?

 

[diedrichg]

How much load do you see on the CPU during a large file transfer ~300Mb or larger? Don't use the same file twice as it will be cached in memory.

Check jumbo frames of 9000 is set on the ipv4 windows nic and mtu 9000 is set on the FN box. See if that helps.

No. No AFP accessible on Windows boxes.

 

[ISantus]

How much load do you see on the CPU during a large file transfer ~300Mb or larger? Don't use the same file twice as it will be cached in memory.

Check jumbo frames of 9000 is set on the ipv4 windows nic and mtu 9000 is set on the FN box. See if that helps.

No. No AFP accessible on Windows boxes.

Currently transferring from the windows machine again. Things seem to be working just fine for the time being. Not sure why I can't get the error to occur again. CPU is showing around 20% load with a 30 GB file transfer.

Can you help clarify your requests regarding the windows NIC and the FN box? Im sorry you lost me a bit there

 

[ISantus]

System had transferred at 4 separate times approximately 50gb worth of files (4 separate transfers of 10-12gb files) without issue. It just now after transferring 90% of a 30gb file at 87mb/s just dropped to 400kb/s. CPU usage still hovering around 20%

 

[ISantus]

Got windows jumbo packet set to 9000. Setting mtu 9000 errors stating this network 10.0.0.19 is already in use by another NIC

 

[diedrichg]

Got windows jumbo packet set to 9000. Setting mtu 9000 errors stating this network 10.0.0.19 is already in use by another NIC

Go to Network>Interfaces and set "mtu 9000" in the Options box of the interface.

 

[ISantus]

Go to Network>Interfaces and set "mtu 9000" in the Options box of the interface.

I have done this but I get the error I noted in post #15.

 

[diedrichg]

Odd

 

[ISantus]

What is really odd is that my Macbook has no issues transferring. In fact once the windows machine starts to struggle to transfer, if I transfer something via my Macbook, the windows machine starts to transfer again at regular speeds (100 mb/s). It is almost as if the Windows machine cant keep the connection

 

[diedrichg]

What is really odd is that my Macbook has no issues transferring. In fact once the windows machine starts to struggle to transfer, if I transfer something via my Macbook, the windows machine starts to transfer again at regular speeds (100 mb/s). It is almost as if the Windows machine cant keep the connection

Realtek NIC on the Windows machine? They are flaky but I don't know if adding a PCIe Intel EXPI9301CTBLK NIC would help. Possibly. They're not horribly expensive, ~$28.