Problem - Readynas pro rndp600e + netgear GS-Serie Switch

Could you check to ensure you are using Cat5e or newer ethernet cables (note that the ethernet cable that came with the NAS may be a Cat5 cable which is inadequate)?

Hi mdgm,

That's the first thing i did. i've been checking each cable, changed them. They are all 5e.

I kept in touch with Netgear support and below is their new answer :

"Puisque vous avez acheté un ReadyNas d'entrperise donc je vous conseille de le brancher à un de nos Prosafe switchs comme le GS105E ce qui vous permet d'avoir une performance stable et rapide."
Translated : "Since you've bought a Profesionnal Readynas, i advise you to plug it to one of our Prosage switches like the GS105E, which gives you stable and fast performance".

Is that serious ? I'm being advised by netgear that their own consumer-level switches certified gigabit wouldn't be enough for the task despite being on the compatibility list.. I'm not a network engineer, but is their advice really serious ?

If you have the funds, upgrade your switch to GS108t - these works fine.
Ebay the other switch and you should get 30% back.

The GS108T looks nice but was not available where i had my GS605 and 608... And reading about the GS105e convince me it was a nice solution.
So, i followed what netgear support suggested, had my GS608 refunded and took one of those prosafeplus GS105e and well... it works like a charm... for the moment.

Sincerely, even if this model is manageable, i still can't understand why it succeeds where the so called gs605-608 failed.

I had a similar issue with my ReadyNAS NV and the initial version of the GS108T. Tried all of the usual troubleshooting things, switching cables, ports and even a different GS108T and none of this helped. I had to set the link to 100Mb to get reliable transfers. The really odd thing is that the switch woked just fine with my ReadyNAS Pro with NIC LACP teaming.

I replace the GS108t-100 with a GS108T-200 (v2) and the issue went away. I don't have an explanation as to why but just glad it is at 1Gb.

I had no problems at all with the NVs and the v1 108t, but with the Pro I have found that enabling Flow Control will solve some of the problems of erratic data rates.
There are other factors like drivers, jumbo frame settings etc.

It seems the GS-605e didn't really solve my problem.
As charleslacour mention it, connecting at 100mb makes the connection stable, but at 1000mb, not anymore...
Any transfer may or may not start and if they start, at 5%, 50% or 80%, the transmission may stop.
I've checked what the prosafe plus utility could diagnose but no CRC error packets and all cable pass the test.
I just can't understand anymore where is the matter coming from. I've changed all my cables, passing even from cat5e to cat6 and as for the network card settings (Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller, Gigabyte motherboard), except enabling/disabling jumbo frame, which didn't help, i can't see what to modify. Drivers are all updated.

By the way, when a transfer is about to stop, i've noticed that the switch is not anymore manageable and is not anymore in the list of the prosafeplus utility.

victorhortaliveson wrote:
I had no problems at all with the NVs and the v1 108t, but with the Pro I have found that enabling Flow Control will solve some of the problems of erratic data rates. There are other factors like drivers, jumbo frame settings etc.

Erratic, that's the word. Sometimes, it transfers at 4mo/s, sometimes at 70mo... for the same kind of file. I'll try to disable the flow control on the computer see if it solves anything.

You might try installing NetMeter from here : http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/

It gives a "realtime" (more or less) display of the data transfers going on to/from your PC.
If the trace is reasonably flat, then the limiting rate of the connection has been reached and to increase it means changing something (e.g. disabling an anti-virus programme that's slowing stuff down, changing from a 100Mbps to a 1000Mbps NIC, enabling Jumbo frames etc).

If the trace is all up and down, then there are some settings that are causing extra control traffic up/down the link.
This can be mismatched settings (e.g. Flow Control, NIC drivers, inability to agree a DataRate between NIC and Switch etc).
To get further with this means changing one thing at a time and retesting.
I also found that a drive that's going bad can also give this, especially if you are trying to Read from a ReadyNAS Pro. Write speeds seem unaffected.
Do you have a drive with Reallocated Sectors ? This might be the cause of the problem.

I created a special test folder with multiple copies of the 1GB file that IOMeter creates and doing copy/paste between locations to check Read and Write rates. If you start with the simplest config and introduce changes then you can keep a track of what's going on. I also run it through a backup programme to check the data rates of read/write/compare sequences.

PS

I found that Enabling Flow Control on everything fixed my problems for a while. Now I have another duff 2TB Seagate that's causing problems, but that's going to be replaced soon so all might be OK again.

thanks for this very complete answer. I've tried to disable the flow control setting but no effect, transfers are either slow, either stop.

Below, you can see, for the same test files 10x300mo, what's happening. Reading from the pro is perfect, writing to it is just messy.
As for reallocated sectors, most of the hds are at zero, one around 3-4 and the worst being at 20. Most of them are from this year.


I"ll try to reinstall the network card and see if it can improve things. I don't know if this will reset all windows setting concerning network transmissions.