2.5GBe USB LAN

Doesn't help much using such a device on a NAS certainly never intended to be operate on these legacy NAS devices (all Netgear NAS are ...)

The limitation to about 80 Mb/s was always on the storage side (the HDDs, the Raid - overall the CPU, the memory.

Some percent more might be reached by using SMB 3.0 transport and jumbo frames - but that does not make any wonders possible.

This limitation to about 80 Mb/s vs the "full' Gigabit Ethernet must be somewhere on the USB side of that NAS. Strongly doubt ad-hoc driver installations are possible anyway for various reasons...

Have you checked the advertised link speed of the interface with ethtool?

You could try installing iperf on the NAS and a PC - that would let you measure the network throughput independently of the RAID.

You can also test the RAID throughput using dd ( of=/dev/null for read tests; if=/dev/zero for write tests).  That will give you some idea on how much you might actually gain if you get the 2.5G running at full speed.  Though this wouldn't account for SAMBA, which will slow things down.

 I have an old Ultra2 2Gb

Do you have an Ultra 2 (RNDU2000)?  Or an Ultra 2 Plus (RNDP200U)?

How did you install the driver?  It's going to need kernel support, and the kernel doesn't have any drivers for 2.5GbE devices, AFAIK.  It only natively supports 1GB and below and 10GbE.  I'm suspicious that it's using the native Realtek driver, which is 1GbE max, not what you installed.

Do you still have a 1GB interface connected and enabled?  If so, it's likely actually using that interface.  Check what interface the Performance screen show is being used.

If you need WoL capability, you can connect one 1GB connection but have it disabled.  A WoL to its MAC address will still wake the NAS, but the OS won't try to use it.

Hi, could you explain how to proccess whole driver installation? You are talking regarding driver compilation.

There is package you refer to (R8152 package - oficial website driver) and something called DKMS.. last time i tried DKMS (from github project), installed appeared correctly, but no new ethernet adapter appeared. Currently uptodate version is both 2.21.4

Im noob in this.. modding old outdated linux, like mobs like to say. :-) I have bought cheap RTL8157 5gbe adapter from CableMatters at ebay recently. Connected to the only usb 3.1 at RN312 unit. It appears in usb listed devices, etc. I dont expect miracle, but network transfers speed improvement would be better. This topic gave me hope.

I would add lsusb and other commands info, but currently, just for sure, reinstalling and defaulting whole RNOS after last fail.

Guide + info. First it was neccesary to add another (working) source for packages:

deb [trusted=yes] http://archive.debian.org/debian-security jessie/updates main non-free contrib

So i could download and install classic: sudo, nano, make, usbutils, latestkeyring, freexiankeyring, kernelplus, then i added linux-image-extra just for sure, and surprisingly also dkms, build-essentials, and linux-headers-amd64 (in this order) were successfuly installed. Then according another I have also installed also bc. Most of packages i dont know purpose or further details. Nevermind.

I have also downladed original debian 4.4.218 (haven't tried yet) and from your recomendation downloaded GPL source WW6.10.9SRC for my current ReadyNAS OS 6. I have RN312 enterprise unit, and if i seen correctly, your Ultra2 has different GPL source files listing for download (just mentioning difference).

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0bda:8157 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

Make driver or attempt to install dkms driver, both still resulted with missing linux-header-4.4.218.x86_64.1 error message.

Then i tried to bash .. linux kernel headers compilation, (4th step of your guide), using in folder linux-4.4.218-x86_64, it took about one half or one hour. Few warnings or stacks bigger then expected byte size, but it finally went whole and completed, I cant judge warnings messages.

Then.. i tried install Realtek driver (8152), there were some faulty bytes or points, altought it did. No new adapter appeared, i dont know what symlink to where (no success). But i have done install of Realtek driver (8152) DKMS from github version and it finnaly completed finished, new adapter appeared. So i connected cable, and it works on 1gbit. Webadmin-network says 1gbit on all adapters even while no cable connected.

So is this the success or not? I have tried setting network adapter speed according driver readme.txt (uname -r says clearly 4.4.218.x86_64.1)

(ethtool -s eth2 autoneg on advertise 0x802f) should do 2,5gbit, seemed command done, but no change (in webadmin).

for 2,5gbit: ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x80000000002f says invalid command line parameter(s)

ethtool for 5gbit -s eth2 autoneg on advertise 0x180000000002f (says same, invalid command parameter(s))

readme says, it should work (0x802f does) for kernel below 4.10, and the other (long hexcodes) for newer kernel than 4.10 but those commands dont work

sudo ethtool -s eth2 speed 5000 duplex full autoneg on - says "cant advertise 5000 duplex full"

sudo ethtool -s eth2 speed 2500 duplex full autoneg on - seems command done, but no change

webadmin still showing 1gbit, should i rely on this? i have not yet 5gbit network hub/switch, so i can only connect  5gbit usb-rj usb stick to another, will this work and proove all work is done ok?

I have made clean reinstall NAS OS and after package installation, i have installed newer linux-headers-5.10-amd64, build-essential, dkms and recompiled linux (directory) 4.4.218.x86_64.1, then installed again dkms driver. I also tried to replace this one by realtek default driver (dkms add, dkms build, dkms install .. commands, all did their job), but it didnt changed anything.

uname -r  for linux version

4.4.218.x86_64.1

ehtool speed / link mode manual setting

(before OS boots, there is 5.0gbit by nature, but not reachable in booted debian linux)

root@NAS:/sda/www/aaa# ethtool -s eth2 autoneg on advertise 0x180000000002f
ethtool: bad command line argument(s)
For more information run ethtool -h
root@NAS:/sda/www/aaa# ethtool -s eth2 speed 5000 autoneg on
Cannot advertise speed 5000

readme says (but long hex values settings dont work neither): i thought i have kernel above 4.10

- Example of setting speed

	2.5G before kernel v4.10
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x802f

	2.5G for kernel v4.10 and later
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x80000000002f

	5G for kernel v4.10 and later (Couldn't be supported before kernel v4.10)
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x180000000002f

	10G for kernel v4.10 and later (Couldn't be supported before kernel v4.10)
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x180000000102f

	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x002f (1G)
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x000f (100M full)
	# ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on advertise 0x0003 (10M full)

some more info regarding os/kernel/driver version

dkms install -m realtek-r8152 -v 2.21.4 --force
Module realtek-r8152/2.21.4 already installed on kernel 4.4.218.x86_64.1/x86_64

ethtool eth2 info regarding transfer modes.

 ethtool eth2
Settings for eth2:
        Supported ports: [ MII ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
                                2500baseX/Full
        Supported pause frame use: No
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                1000baseT/Full
                                2500baseX/Full
        Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
        Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Link partner advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                             100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
                                             1000baseT/Full
        Link partner advertised pause frame use: No
        Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
        Speed: 2500Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: MII
        PHYAD: 32
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: on
        Supports Wake-on: pumbg
        Wake-on: d
        Current message level: 0x00007fff (32767)
                               drv probe link timer ifdown ifup rx_err tx_err tx_queued intr tx_done rx_status pktdata hw wol
        Link detected: yes

2,5gbit link obviously works with stable 180/130MB/s speed (upload to NAS/download from NAS), altought i think those could be improved. If is see correctly (top and htop is a mess), it takes at most half cpu(smbd consumes/utilizes single one core out of 2). I have also turned off SMB3 encryption but no change. There is also possibility to use with SMB Plus addon, choose samba version CIFS 1.0, or 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.0.2, 3.1.1 those values offers SMB Plus addon. Maybe one or more would be less cpu consuming.