SOLVED Samba share slow with Mac, Any succces? Windows saturates.

[Kris Heslop]

Hope some others may have found solution for this, searching forums, Reddit, and google, have tried several things, but none last or work.

I have been using FreeNAS since 2016 and originally thought my slow FreeNAS to/from Mac transfers were due to WiFi. I have a windows machine that saturates 1GbE connection at 110-125MB/s for reads and writes, even when from or to a single hard disk. Now I have a hardwire connection through a USB3 to GbE Realtek adapter that says capable up to 5Gb/S. So I now know that it is not the FreeNAS box (Details in Sig.) Speeds are essentially the same wired or WiFi (have AC 1900 connection about 6ft away.)

Files are typically media files with sizes between 500 MB and 35 GB, with an average of 15GB.

I have a Cat 6 Line between both ASUS RT-AC87 and server and NIC adapter for Mac, Win machine is Cat 5e, yet connects and transfers at 1GbE. Had same issues with Netgear R6300 Router (used while I was swapping out the ASUS for a warranty claim on the transfer speeds and random dropped network connections.

My Mac transfers between 8-40 MB/s, most typically 10-25MB/s. (I can get faster speeds on an external USB3 NvME (BlackMagic speeds of 400MB+/S on USB3 and WD MyBook (BlackMagic speeds of 120MB/s+) when connected to the USB2 on my Windows machine (40MB/s +/-.)

Transfers have significant peaks and valleys to the transfer speeds (using activity monitor and Netatalk dashboards to measure throughput.

I have set the Mac ack to 0, from default of 3, and that is in /etc/sysctl.conf file. In times past that has increased the speed, but not reliably.

I have turned off "signing", but that also does not provide a reliable increase. (This is not in a config file, since I am unable to locate the one they say should already be present, and just today figured out how to create the sysctl.conf file.)

I have activated "fruit" in NAS, with initial but not recurring benefits.

I deactivated one network setting in FreeNAS, forget which, and it increased the speeds up to 100+MB/s, but that has gone away as well.

Any suggestions?

 

[Kris Heslop]

I get the same (8-40MB/s) speeds out of wireless when connected at 1.3Gb/s so that makes me think it is a setting versus the wired/wireless connection. Could this be because the rMBP uses a USB3 to Ethernet adapter? It is a Realtek chipset, and IIRC those use more processor power. It seems like there are only 3 types of chipsets out their for dongle: Realtec, Asix, and Apple's Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet (with only comments I have read being "a lot of chips.")

 

[Kris Heslop]

I found a solution for this on a rMBP (Retina MacBook Pro.) I recalled that for the FreeNAS recommended devices, that one of the issues is that some NIC's rely on the CPU for carrying the load. The majority of USB 3.0 to GbE adaptors are based on the Realtek chipsets, the forums seem to call out Realtec NIC's for using the CPU to carry the load.

I dug around and found that there are two non-Realtec alternatives:
- Apple's Thunderbolt to Ethernet adaptor. (Chip info not identifiable, one source said something like "many chips"
- Asix's chipset (Used by UGreen, Amazon Basics, and Pluggable.)

Since I run two DisplayPort monitors, I passed on the Thunderbolt 2 adaptors and ordered an Amazon Basics.

For MAC's the ASIX devices require a driver to be downloaded (The driver on the CD supplied was over 1.5 years old) which was easily done.

I used the installer as instructed before connecting the USB3 to GbE adaptor, the computer rebooted and I then plugged the adaptor directly into my computer and started a 32GB transfer from an external NvME drive in a USB 3 enclosure to my FreeNAS box. The while my prior max speeds were about 80MB/s, with 48MB/s-80MB/s transfer, the Amazon Basic adaptor immediately started at 108MB/s and went up to 120MB/s (so max GbE speed, later going between 80+MB/s to 120MB/s.

I then tested by connecting it to a powered USB 3 Hub and got speeds of 93MB/s to 120MB/s, although it seemed like it was a little slower overall through the hub.

Since I do a fair amount of 23GB to 38GB file transfers, the 50% higher speed is appreciated and I consider this solved.