Vista Wireless Performance Questionnaire

Oops... my post was not completely correct. I enabled Jumbo Frames on the nas... so the MTU is not 1500 on the NAS.

Have to encourage people to read all the way to the bottom on this post. This is what saved me. After changing the MTU to 1430, and completing the other random steps in this forum, my wireless connection to the ReadyNas Duo is POWER PACKED. Thanks forum team for getting this one spot on.

Best of luck!

I've upgraded my Access point now to a 802.11n router access point with a gigabit port linked to the nas. I now achieve speeds of over 5,5 Mbit over wireless... :))

After I upgraded my network it would only connect at 802.11g level and performance of my connection over wireless dropped again to 500Kbit/ speeds... Before I upgraded I got speeds of over 2Mbit/s on 802.11g level. This showes that it is a combination between settings of your windows vista machine with the specific access point and the nas. After I adjusted the security of the wireless network to be compatible with 802.11n everything worked excellent.

It is my belief that the main adjustments are to be searched in the Windows machine as I posted before in this topic, but also the combination between the nas, access point and the wireless vista machine.

good luck with the tuning.

regards,

Robin

0) Updated to Windows Vista SP1? SP1 contains a number of network changes that improved overall throughput with the ReadyNAS.
Already Vista SP1
1) Tried changing MTU on ReadyNAS and laptop to 1492? Instructions on how to change Vista MTU at http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/vistaMTU.htm . A couple users had success keeping the ReadyNAS MTU at 1500 and switching Vista MTU to 1460.
Altering MTU on ReadyNAS to 1492 had no effect. Switching Vista MTU to 1460 has cured the problem!. TCP retransmits have gone down to virtually none from 100+
2) What model of Wireless Router and firmware is being used?
Netgear DG834G V2
3) What Wireless Card model and firmware being used?
Atheros AR928x wireless network adapter
4) What connection speed are you seeing for Wireless Adapter (i.e. 54 Mbps)?
54 Mbps
5) What's the connection speed between ReadyNAS to Router (10/100/1000 Mbps) -- you can see this in FrontView's Network page.
100 Mbps full duplex
6) What's the throughput from Windows XP to ReadyNAS and Vista to ReadyNAS? Both Machines at or near same location?
Throughput from readyNAS to Vista and XP to vista are now both 2.3+MB/s. ReadyNAS to Vista has gone up from 4.5KB/s!
7) Whats the throughput from Windows XP to Vista?
Throughput from XP to vista is 2.3+MB/s.
8) Does disabling firewall help? One user reported problem solved by disabling Symantec firewall.
Disabling windows vista firewall has no effect
9) Does uninstalling anti-virus help? One user reported problem solved by uninstalling CA anti-virus.
Uninstalling AVG anti-virus has no effect
10) Does enabling jumbo frames work? Several folks reported problem solved by enabling jumbo frames, and this also had the effect of speeding up wired transfers.
N/A
11) Are you able to try another router? A couple users reported replacing current router/switch solved the problem.
N/A

Don't you just love Vista?!!!

Purchased ReadyNas Duo 500GB x 1 disk.

Works great with Windows XP - wired desktop. Experiencing the typical windows vista wired and wireless problem described on this forum.

Changed the mtu to 1430, 1492 - speeds up read and write, but after running backup using SyncBackPro for over an hour it times out (likely from packet fragmentation) and interrupts the backup.

I am also running a linux server that has Fedora 8 installed and SAMBA running, so esentially a very similar setup to the ReadyNas. I can read, write, and backup for hours without a timeout or slowdown - at 1500 mtu (default setting) and using the same wireless router with my Vista laptop.

This is obviously a problem with the ReadyNas unit. I upgraded the firmware to the latest 4.1.6 beta and no improvement. I will be returning this unit as soon as possible and will either try a different company or upgrade my current server with a raid solution. There is no excuse for this not to be fixed - the problem has been ongoing since 2008 according to this post! From my research no other ready made NAS units are having this particular problem with Windows Vista.

To reiterate, using 1500 mtu setting on the laptop I can backup to a linux based samba server (without timeout), read from it, and write from it at full wireless speeds. Using the EXACT SAME EQUIPMENT, I cannot do the same with the ready nas. I can read and write at full speeds with no backup timeout on Windows XP with the ReadyNAS and my linux server.

How in the world is this not a problem with the ReadyNAS. I bought this to be a reliable backup solution that should work out of the box. If I wanted to patch together a solution myself I would have upgraded my existing server with a RAID hardware controller and more drives. No excuse Netgear! None whatsoever. It is rediculous to purchase a high priced item, then spend over 12 hours of my own time trying to coax it into working with mainstream hardware.

When are you going to direct your attention to this? I cannot even backup 5 gigs of information without having to let it timeout and then restart it. How can anyone possibly rely on this? My 6 year old linux server puts this to shame?

If anyone else is thinking of buying this or has recently bought it, I would recommend returning it and looking at other solutions. It is not worth your time.

Having the same issues as everyone else. Tried everything (MTU on Vista and NAS, turning off all anti-virus and firewalls, etc.). Nothing works reliably. ReadyNAS <=> Wireless Router <=> Vista has some sort of fundamental timing problem that Netgear can't seem to address or figure out.

And it's been like this for nearly a year, given the forum posts I've seen.

I give up. Going to sell the ReadyNAS on ebay and get something that works with Vista and a Wireless Router.

I have had all the same problems with Vista over wireless. I am not willing to modify my Vista installation to try and fix a problem I think lies with the readynas. As it is, I just rely on a wired connection for my vista machine.

The thing is, Vista has been out for almost 4 years now. There should be a fix for this, and blaming vista simply isn't a solution as far as I am concerned.

This needs to be fixed for Windows 7. If not, you've lost a customer as this is just madness.

I must say that although I've had similar thoughts during the debugging of my installation it's not completely fair to point the arrow solely at the readynas. It also has to do with the network setup in Vista and its "intelligent" choices it makes for the user. Where there should be a decent interface in an OS like vista for tuning your network setting it just assumes it knows what's best.

If you endure the tuning as described in several links in these posts you will be able to get it to work. I do agree that it should not solely be addressed in these forums and that readynas should put out more effort to get this resolved as many people are experiencing these issues.

I hope you will get it fixed on your local side and if not I hope readynas will take these complaints serious.

best regards,

Robin

PS I did get it working finally but I do feel with the people who haven't as I too have spent too much time on this to get it working decently.

rdouven wrote:

I must say that although I've had similar thoughts during the debugging of my installation it's not completely fair to point the arrow solely at the readynas. It also has to do with the network setup in Vista and its "intelligent" choices it makes for the user. Where there should be a decent interface in an OS like vista for tuning your network setting it just assumes it knows what's best. If you endure the tuning as described in several links in these posts you will be able to get it to work. I do agree that it should not solely be addressed in these forums and that readynas should put out more effort to get this resolved as many people are experiencing these issues. I hope you will get it fixed on your local side and if not I hope readynas will take these complaints serious. best regards, Robin PS I did get it working finally but I do feel with the people who haven't as I too have spent too much time on this to get it working decently.

How is it unfair to point the arrow solely at ReadyNAS? With the exact same network setup, mtu, everything - my linux server (readynas is running on a linux os too) which is running SAMBA does not have any of the problems that the ReadyNAS does.

You tell me where the problem lies. I too have tried all sorts of MTU values, and still my backups will not complete without timing out. They do complete on my linux server however.

Stop making excuses for Netgear. It is plain as day - with all of the variables remaining the same (MTU, Router, ethernet cables, wireless cards and nics, etc), I can backup, read, and write files at full 100Mbps fast ethernet speeds to a linux server while experiencing no timeouts. I cannot do the same with the ReadyNAS Duo. The only variable that is changed is if I am accessing / backing up to the ReadyNas or my linux server. When I try to read files to the ReadyNAS with all of the aforementioned variables remaining the same, I get around 4k / sec (Dialup!). On my linux server, I can read files around 2.7MB / sec (approx 22Mbps) from a Vista laptop with a 54Mbps wireless connection. If I tweaked the settings on my linux server and laptop, I could hopefully get about 30Mbps or better. I'd be ecstatic with 10Mbps from the ReadyNas! Sure, I can change my MTU and get good speeds from the ReadyNAS, but my backups timeout after about 2 Gigs transferred. What's the point?

The problem lies with the ReadyNAS. I cannot understand how it could lie anywhere else. Why is Netgear shunning this problem onto its users - making them jump through hoops: Disable the sidebar, Adjust throttling. Well guess what, someone might want to use the sidebar. None of these work for me, and from my research on the forums it does not seem to work for the majority of the other users. I've even upgraded to Vista SP1 and then SP2 with no change. I have tried well over 20 different MTU settings between 1400 and 1500.

How about you take responsibility and fix the ReadyNas Netgear? If you don't have engineers that can, then you need to hire some that are smarter or more motivated than the ones you have. There are a lot of unemployed people, I'm sure someone is smarter than what you have working for you now, that will even work for less money.

have you also tried the below because it's more then just MTU that vista fouls up.

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I've had all the same issues and have it now tweaked to the right settings. The following link provided me with the right information:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/vistaTCPtweaks.htm

I've got the following settings:
C:\Windows\system32>netsh interface tcp show global
Querying active state...

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State : enabled
Chimney Offload State : enabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level : normal
Add-On Congestion Control Provider : ctcp
ECN Capability : enabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps : disabled