Transfer Speeds

[Mitch0]

Hi Guys, I'm new to FreeNAS and hoping someone a little more experienced may be able to help.

I recently set up my first FreeNAS server, and everything is working fine except it is a little slow and I'm wondering what the limiting factor is and if there is anything I can do to speed it up.

Server spec: G350 2.4GHz, 16GB RAM, 5x 3TB in ZFS2 (~9TB usable).

I'm getting speeds of around 5-6 megabytes per second over both FTP and a Windows share, on both upload and download.

When the transfers first start the speed fluctuates quite a bit, going as high as 10Mbytes/sec but always slows down to somewhere between 5 and 6.

Any ideas on what it might be?

Thanks,
Mitch

 

[HolyK]

Is it direct connect from your NIC or do you have active network device? What kind of?

 

[Mitch0]

Is it direct connect from your NIC or do you have active network device? What kind of?

The server is connected to the router via an ethernet cable.

 

[HolyK]

What kind of router is is? Is it it Gbit router (i suppose it is :]) ? If yes, has it internal x-port switch so is it routing only between WAN interface and switch, or is it 5-port router (So all 5 ports are bridged between each other). Well ... better to post a link to your device :]

Sorry for dummy questions, but speed 10MB/s points to limitation of the 100Mbit router (max 12.5MB/s minus transfer overhead)

Also you can measure bandwidth via ieprf / jperf :)

 

[Mitch0]

What kind of router is is? Is it it Gbit router (i suppose it is :]) ? If yes, has it internal x-port switch so is it routing only between WAN interface and switch, or is it 5-port router (So all 5 ports are bridged between each other). Well ... better to post a link to your device :]

Sorry for dummy questions, but speed 10MB/s points to limitation of the 100Mbit router (max 12.5MB/s minus transfer overhead)

Also you can measure bandwidth via ieprf / jperf :)

Thank you for the reply. The router is 300Mbit. I don't understand some of the questions but the model is Belkin F7D2301ed.

Not currently at home but will measure bandwidth when I am.

Thank you for your help so far.

 

[HolyK]

Even if you achieve 10MB/s it is waaaaaay bellow what you can get with GBit network. Just keep your router and buy some Gbit switch. It is cheaper than router and to be honest, you don't need Gbit router since i don't thing you have Gbit connection at home :D

So ... buy Gbit switch, connect your NAS and all of the workstations into and then just connect the switch to your router.

EDIT: As i can see, router is actually 100Mbit over LAN. 300Mbit is WLAN (wireless), but this is only theoretical/paper speed for 802.11n ... You will not achieve 300Mbit over air at all :]

 

[Mitch0]

My only worry is that currently it only seems to be able to achieve 5-6MBytes/sec and I'm worried there may be some other bottleneck preventing it from achieving 10Mbytes/sec which may still be present even if I get new hardware.

I guess I will look into getting a new router/switch and hope that is all it is.

Thanks for the help!