Terrible FTP speeds ... what can we do?

[danzg]

We are running FreeNAS 8.2.0 (specs below), and getting extremely slow FTP performance.
We have a 100/70mbps FIOS connection, yet FTP (remote) from the FreeNAS is never more than about 5mbps.

We tested FTP from a Mac as a server, and got around 40mbps, but it only streams for 10 seconds or so, then drops to 0 for a minute before resuming.

We tested with
iperf -c iperf.scottlinux.com -P20
from the FreeNAS and got 60mbps upstream. Same from the Mac. So it seems the network is working fine.

Tried AFP and SMB, but results were worse than FTP.

Is there anything we can do? Do we need a stronger machine?

(Local transfers over LAN go at 800mbps or more, so I know the actual storage [zfs] is fast enough.)



System Information
Build: FreeNAS-8.2.0-RELEASE-p1-x64 (r11950)
Platform: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU 540 @ 3.07GHz
Memory: 6121MB
Uptime: 1:06PM up 3 days, 13:05, 0 users
Load Average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00

 

[cyberjock]

Few things:

1. That version of FreeNAS should be upgraded... desperately.
2. You don't meet the minimum 8GB of RAM requirement for FreeNAS 9, so you're going to need to add more RAM.
3. ISPs do NOT promise 70Mb/sec up. That's what they offer, but that's not what they guarantee. More than likely that is precisely why you are not getting "better" speeds.
4. You will find very little support for an OS that old, so you need to go back to #1 and upgrade. ;)

 

[budmannxx]

3. ISPs do NOT promise 70Mb/sec up. That's what they offer, but that's not what they guarantee. More than likely that is precisely why you are not getting "better" speeds.

Just in the FWIW category, my guess is your points 1, 2, and 4 have more to do with this than #3. With my FiOS connection I have never gotten less than my advertised speeds, and I usually get more. I don't believe there's a formal speed guarantee from Verizon, but FiOS connections are incredibly reliable. Much more so than cable.

 

[danzg]

OK, thanks for the feedback. We'll put in 16GB or more and upgrade to 9.

 

[solarisguy]

Before any drastic measures are undertaken, get (preferably just borrow) a quality router/firewall and retest. In my opinion, your experiment with a Mac points to factors outside of your FreeNAS server. Also try with only FreeNAS machine plugged into your router/firewall

 

[danzg]

I think we need more RAM anyway ... the docs recommend 1GB per TB of storage, and we now have nearly 22TB!
Unfortunately we can only put 16GB max on our motherboard.

 

[solarisguy]

@danzg, anything ?

 

[danzg]

Still having issues upgrading the RAM ... mobo wouldn't recognize 16GB, gives errors with 8GB:

Starting ntpd.
/etc/rc: WARNING: failed precmd routine for vmware_guestd
Starting smbd.
panic: vm_page_insert: page already inserted
cpuid = 2

Fatal trap 9: general protection fault while in kernel mode​

Thanks for checking in!

 

[cyberjock]

What motherboard do you have?

 

[danzg]

ha, 'botherboard' is right!

sorry, i mistyped ... we had 6GB in there, we tried 4x8GB -- nothing. And 2x8GB gave those errors.

Asus P7P55D-E LX

max ram supposedly 16gb ...