Slow file transfer rate over LAN

Status
Not open for further replies.

B_Hayward

Cadet
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Messages
6
I am new to the world of Network Attached Storage systems, and FreeNAS. I recently setup a FreeNAS system using an old Dell Dimension E510 (or was it E520, doesn't matter) with a Pentium D dual core 2.8 GHz processor and 2 Gb of DDR-667 memory. I have a Raid 1 setup with (2) 2Tb hard drives which use the UFS file system. I setup a NFS file share and was able to connect to it from my Linux workstations no problem. My concern is when i started to transfer files over to my server on my LAN the file transfer rates are slower than what i would have expected. I understand that I won't get the full 100 Mbs transfer rate that my router and NIC cards are rated at but I am only getting 9 Mbs. More specifically it starts out at about 23 - 26 Mbs then it continually drops and settles in at around 8 - 10 Mbs. Is there something I'm missing? Am i able to tweak FreeNAS to get a better transfer rate? I've been googling around trying to find an answer to this problem and i haven't come up with anything, maybe I'm not using the correct search terms....anyway I would really appreciate any insight or ideas anybody has. If this question has been asked before and explained please point me in that direction. Thanks.
 

peterh

Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2011
Messages
315
Are you talking about Mb(megabit) or MB(megabytes) per seconds ?
The "reporting graphs" in the freenas gui is scaled at megabits, if you get your figures
from "systat -ifstat" it's megabytes/s

9 MB is close to what to expect on a 100Mb LAN, 9Mb then you have a problem,see what counters
on your freenas says ( login via ssh ) and try "netstat -i" "netstat -m"
Also "ifconfig -a" and see if half/full duplex settings is what you expect.( normally full duplex/100Mb )
 

xbmcg

Explorer
Joined
Feb 6, 2012
Messages
79
I think, the bottleneck is your 100Mbit LAN Interface. 10MB/second is approximately 90Mbps, so it is close to max. With a Gbit Ethernet you can reach up to 90-100MByte/second (by using SATA2 / SATA3 Drives, ATA is much slower) - according to your drives / Interfaces. Also the performance of you linux box can negatively affect the measures (slow drive etc.) - the transfer is as fast as the slowest component (performance bottleneck) - the used protocol and file sizes take their price too (samba vs. nfs vs. ftp).
 

B_Hayward

Cadet
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Messages
6
Thank you both for your help. I am going to have to learn some new command line commands to do some research as to what is really happening when transferring data to my server. I tried to do a new install of freenas because i thought i broke the previous install trying to configure ssh. When i rebooted the machine it wouldn't boot to the normal menu screen. i was getting an error message "_secure_path: cannot start /root/.login.conf: not a directory". so i rebooted the machine again and i got the same error. I re-installed FreeNAS on the the 4GB cf card which i use with a CF - SATA adapter and started to rebuild my server again. but i was getting the same error message...even after a complete re-install. any ideas what that error message means? do i need to start a new thread elsewhere on the forum for this issue. I install FreeNAS from a CD onto the cf card and ive done it many times in the time i have been playing around with FreeNAS and this is the first time i have experienced this. again any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top