uploading to NAS over gigabit LAN speeds good?

Check the MTU size on your laptop's NIC to ensure packets are not being fragmented over the network.

You might also want to check the auto-scaling feature of Windows if your using Vista / 7. Auto scaling attempts to increase the MTU of the machine incrementally when Windows detects it can support a higher MTU than currently set. There sre two issues with this approach as far as I can see; Firstly the constant checking generates additional traffic, and secondly any packets lost due to failed attempts at raising the MTU of the source machine will affect write performance to the NAS as those packets need to be re-sent.

The NAS itself can intelligently negotiate it's packet size down to a level that it's packets are not fragmented en-route to your PC. However, if your PC is constantly attempting to raise this value (and failing) your read/write performance will suffer. It's because of this auto-tuning feature in Windows Vista / 7 (which was designed to stop people having to adjust MTU's manually) that performance can suffer over wireless connections. A desktop wired NIC will respond quicker than a wireless one in my experience and so adjust for changes in MTU easier than the wireless connection, which also has to deal with other considerations like signal strength and interferance.

1-2MB/s is about what you can expect for Wireless-G, but you should expect 8-10MB/sec for a wired 10/100 ethernet connection and faster for Gigabit connections (depending on the NAS / Switch / Router used on your network). Also, it's likely that your router won't support jumbo frames, even if your desktop PC and the NAS do. Most consumer Netgear routers for example don't support jumbo frames. But by adding in a network switch and connecting your NAS and PC to that via Gigabit LAN, you bypass the router, which will then only be responsible for assigning an IP address to those devices if your using DHCP. Any subsequent communications between the Gigabit-enabled PC and the NAS ought to go direct to each other via the switch. I bought one for exactly this purpose.

Search Google for instructions on how to set your MTU under Windows and look into either "restricting" or totally disabling the auto-tuning feature of Vista / 7 if that's what you desire. There are also other TCP settings that can be adjusted at the same time such as side-scaling, chimney offload and congestion detection, but these features (and your ability to use them) will depend on the hardware your using. your main concern is restricting the auto-tuning feature and getting a good MTU size, and then you should see much improved performance.

One other thing to consider: File sizes. Small files will transfer slower than large files sizes as there is less time for the connection to ramp up to full speed before the end of the file is reached. But either way, on a Gigabit LAN connection, with the hardware you've specified, you should be getting at least 40-50MB/sec upload to the NAS. That's the sort of speeds I see via my network meter gadget (if those speeds are to be believed). Using IOMeter is another option to measure upload/download speeds to the NAS.

well right now i'm uploading a 4.5GB movie (compressed in 59 rar files) on the wired connection and it's uploading 2 x1.3MB/s. (2 files at a time)

I have jumbo frames enabled on my NIC with 9KB MTU and enabled jumbo frames on my NAS.

something must be wrong. i will try and disable auto tuning on my windows 7 client and report back.

These are my TCP settings:

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State : disabled
Chimney Offload State : disabled
NetDMA State : enabled
Direct Cache Acess (DCA) : disabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : disabled
Add-On Congestion Control Provider : none
ECN Capability : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled

replaced a bad ethernet cable, and connected direct from laptop (wired nic) to NAS, configured static ip on both. enabled jumbo frames on both nic

i am now getting up to 10MB/s upload to NAS using filezille sftp ssh

do you think i should still be able to get about 30-40 MB/s ? I can't think what else I could do.

put the switch back in the mix - getting up to 10 MB/s upload still ...

Could be lots of reasons why your speeds are poorish.

Are you running Win7 ? If so make sure you have the latest NIC drivers and reinstall them. Are you sure you have a GB NIC ?
Try changing any Flow Control settings on the NIC and the Switch. Is this a managed switch or an ordinary switch ?
I saw better and more consistent data patterns without Jumbo frames than with JF enabled.

FYI I used to get 80MBps+ when connecting a Win7 PC with an Intel Pro 1000/PT NIC to 2x Ultra 6+ through 3x Netgear GS108tV1 over CAT6 cable.
I had all manner of problems but solved them over time by changing the items listed above. Look at my forum posts for more info about my efforts.

There is also a Win programme that shows a "realtime" trace of network data called : NetMeter_v114_beta. Might be worth trying to find it on the Net. If your data trace patten is very up/down, then there is some extra up/down traffic going on - usually a sign of a network mismatch somewhere.

It seems like the nas is not running in gigabit why else would I not be getting over 10MB/s transfer.

i have no option to select 1000Mb/s full duplex

i have 100 Mb full / half or auto-negotiation - that's all.

dirkdigs wrote:
It seems like the nas is not running in gigabit why else would I not be getting over 10MB/s transfer.

Are your cables CAT5e or better?

brand new cat 6