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RN102 slow performances
Hey there ! Just found out an old RN102 that seem to work, I'm trying to set it up 🙂 I am surprised however as it seems too slow compared to the expected capabilities. I've been trying t...
Tibonhomme wrote:
it is set right now to 1 Gb/s and not 1 GB/s, could that be the problem ?
No, this is correct.
- B is Bytes
- b is bits
so 1 gigabit per second.
You can't set this in the NAS, it is negotiated by the NAS and whatever device it is connected to.
Tibonhomme wrote:
All right I see, but wouldnt that mean the reading speed should be significantly higher ?
It depends on the details.
With SMR drives, the tracks are so close together that when you write to track X, you overwrite X+1. Periodically there is extra space (separating the platter into zones).
So when you write to track x, the drive firmware needs to
- read track x+1
- write track x
- read track x+2
- write track x+1
- ...
until it reaches the end of the zone.
These drives do have a large cache, and they will re-order writes to try to minimize the amount of "rippling" that is needed. But at some point the cache isn't enough, and the performance can become glacially slow (often a lot slower than what you are seeing in the test).
Even when the cache is sufficient, there often is a lot of background "rippling" that needs to be done after your writes finish. Even though that is done in the background, the extra seeks can also slow read speed.
The 15 MB/s speeds you measured are equivalent to about 120 Mb/s (8 bits per byte). That is about the internet speed you measured with Speedtest.
Was this last test done with the PC connected with ethernet? If so, was the ethernet directly connected to the same mesh element as the NAS? Or were you using the mesh wifi backhaul?
All right I see, but wouldnt that mean the reading speed should be significantly higher ? It's not the case right now they're about the same speed.
If you're talking about this, it is set right now to 1 Gb/s and not 1 GB/s, could that be the problem ? I cant select it from the settings page of this network tab.
Tibonhomme wrote:
it is set right now to 1 Gb/s and not 1 GB/s, could that be the problem ?
No, this is correct.
- B is Bytes
- b is bits
so 1 gigabit per second.
You can't set this in the NAS, it is negotiated by the NAS and whatever device it is connected to.
Tibonhomme wrote:
All right I see, but wouldnt that mean the reading speed should be significantly higher ?
It depends on the details.
With SMR drives, the tracks are so close together that when you write to track X, you overwrite X+1. Periodically there is extra space (separating the platter into zones).
So when you write to track x, the drive firmware needs to
- read track x+1
- write track x
- read track x+2
- write track x+1
- ...
until it reaches the end of the zone.
These drives do have a large cache, and they will re-order writes to try to minimize the amount of "rippling" that is needed. But at some point the cache isn't enough, and the performance can become glacially slow (often a lot slower than what you are seeing in the test).
Even when the cache is sufficient, there often is a lot of background "rippling" that needs to be done after your writes finish. Even though that is done in the background, the extra seeks can also slow read speed.
The 15 MB/s speeds you measured are equivalent to about 120 Mb/s (8 bits per byte). That is about the internet speed you measured with Speedtest.
Was this last test done with the PC connected with ethernet? If so, was the ethernet directly connected to the same mesh element as the NAS? Or were you using the mesh wifi backhaul?
Hello there ! I apologize for the late answer took me some time to find a laptop in order to proceed to today's experiment.
First of all thank you very much for your detailed explaination of the disk way of working, i appreciate it 🙂
So the last NAStester log was made from a PC in my room using the wifi trough the mesh element to get to the NAS (the wifi mesh element and the NAS are wired).
As you said there was a matching speed between the speed of actual writing and the connection speed i measured with a speed test.
So today i brought in a laptop on which i ran NAStester again, but this time directly wired to the wifi mesh element (and so, not directly, but wired to the NAS too because again my mesh element and the NAS are wired together), and this time got much much higher speed.
Running warmup... Running a 1000MB file write on \\NAS-TIBONHOMME\VolumeMain 5 times... Iteration 1: 78.38 MB/sec Iteration 2: 75.63 MB/sec Iteration 3: 77.23 MB/sec Iteration 4: 75.94 MB/sec Iteration 5: 77.71 MB/sec ----------------------------- Average (W): 76.98 MB/sec ----------------------------- Running a 1000MB file read on \\NAS-TIBONHOMME\VolumeMain 5 times... Iteration 1: 57.37 MB/sec Iteration 2: 56.14 MB/sec Iteration 3: 54.32 MB/sec Iteration 4: 48.07 MB/sec Iteration 5: 56.59 MB/sec ----------------------------- Average (R): 54.50 MB/sec -----------------------------I used both time the same size of file (1000MB) and the difference is really significant, so after all the element that was indeed the source of this bottleneck was the wireless part between my PC and the wifi mesh element !
Tibonhomme wrote:
So today i brought in a laptop on which i ran NAStester again, but this time directly wired to the wifi mesh element (and so, not directly, but wired to the NAS too because again my mesh element and the NAS are wired together), and this time got much much higher speed.
the element that was indeed the source of this bottleneck was the wireless part between my PC and the wifi mesh element
Now you are getting about the same speeds that I got in my test (which also used a NAS connected with ethernet).
How old was the original laptop? Your 15 MB/s speeds are about what I'd expect for an 802.11n connection.
Hey,
It was not a laptop but a desktop computer with a usb wifi antenna
After checking its specs it is exactly 802.11n, I didnt thinked about it at all but you make me realize that I could significantly increase my internet speed too by buying a new one !
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