How to optimize the file transfer speed between USB external hard drive and wired-LAN PC on R7000.

[PhamHuyBao]

Hi everyone,

Here is my configuration:

1. I have R7000, updated to latest firmware.
2. I connect my PC to router using Cat5e cable.
3. I connect my USB 3.0 External Hard Drive (Western Digital 6TB) to USB 3.0 port on R7000.

My question:

1. I got file transfer speed about 30-33 MB/s. What should I do to optimize the transfer speed?
2. Along with Gigabit network card, I also have Killer NIC onboard, with the speed of 2.4 Gbps. I have disabled it since I don’t need it, do you think that if I use this Killer NIC instead of Gigabit NIC, it will improve the file transfer speed substantially?

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@PhamHuyBao wrote:

I think that I will leave everything as it is and accept that the transfer speed of 30-33 MB/s is the best that I can get with R7000. 

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TrustedReview measured the R7000's USB speed at 28-29 MB/sec, which is approximately what you are getting.  http://www.trustedreviews.com/netgear-nighthawk-ac1900-802-11ac-router-review-setup-performance-page...

The R9000 has 100 MB/s read speed and about 55 MB/sec write speed. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/33046-netgear-r9000-nighthawk-x10-smart-wi...

[aalexandrebeta]

Firstly trash the cat5 and replace by a Cat6.

Did you try to run it on your PC?

keep me posted.

[PhamHuyBao]

Honestly, I don't think cable Cat5e (not Cat5) is the problem as Cat5e support Gigabit speed. 

May I ask what optimized speed should I expect in my case?

[aalexandrebeta]

Cat6 has less noise than cat5e.

Can you plug the drive directly to your PC just to make sure of what to expect?

[PhamHuyBao]

Yes, I have plugged my USB HDD to my PC (USB 3.0 port) and I got transfer speed of about 80-90 MB/s. 

I see. If you said so, then I should change to Cat 6 cable then. 

What about the Killer NIC, do you think if I use it instead of normal Gigabit NIC, make any big difference?

[schumaku]

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@PhamHuyBao wrote:

1. I got file transfer speed about 30-33 MB/s. What should I do to optimize the transfer speed?
2. Along with Gigabit network card, I also have Killer NIC onboard, with the speed of 2.4 Gbps. I have disabled it since I don’t need it, do you think that if I use this Killer NIC instead of Gigabit NIC, it will improve the file transfer speed substantially?

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Not much you and me can do.

A lot of stuff Netgear could do, should do, but refusing for years:

- support Jumbo Frames

- Update to a current modern SAMBA, including a current cifs.ko.

- support SMB 3.0 as available in SAMBA 4.x

OK, I'm comparing the Nighthawk X10- however there is a lot of headroom on the routers with less performant processors, too - a NAS similar to the R9000 (X10), AL-212 dual-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15 (about "half" of the X10), can read >200 MB/s (>170 MB/s with AES256 volume encyption) and write >165 MB/s (>145 MB/s with AES256 volume encyption) on average HDD set (RAID0 or RAID1) on single large multi GB files. Or something in the range of 70..80 MB/s over the non-exclusively used X10 5 GHz WLAN.

[PhamHuyBao]

So you mean I don't need to do anything here. 30 - 33 MB/s is the best that I can get with R7000 already?

Changing cable from Cat5e to Cat6 and/or switch to use Killer NIC instead of normal Gigabit NIC won't make any difference?

[schumaku]

Killer NIC is essentially a 1 GbE interface, tuned for lower latency when I remember my friend (a Dell sales manager) information correctly. No rocket science effects on the throughput.

Reasonable CAT5e cabling works even with 10 GbE - on a shorter reach. Unless the CAT5e cables are bad, there should not be a performance difference at all on Gigabit Ethernet when updating to CAT6 (or CAT7).

[PhamHuyBao]

If so,

I think that I will leave everything as it is and accept that the transfer speed of 30-33 MB/s is the best that I can get with R7000. 

Anyone has any different opinion than schumaku?

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@PhamHuyBao wrote:

I think that I will leave everything as it is and accept that the transfer speed of 30-33 MB/s is the best that I can get with R7000. 

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TrustedReview measured the R7000's USB speed at 28-29 MB/sec, which is approximately what you are getting.  http://www.trustedreviews.com/netgear-nighthawk-ac1900-802-11ac-router-review-setup-performance-page...

The R9000 has 100 MB/s read speed and about 55 MB/sec write speed. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/33046-netgear-r9000-nighthawk-x10-smart-wi...

[aalexandrebeta]

The R7000 is middle range router and the R9000 is the most extrme one so the R7000 is doing things slower than the beast!

If you do want perfs purchase a NAS it will be steady and better.

As my grand-ma said you pay for what you get!

[schumaku]

All ReadySHARE performance numbers are achieved by maxing out the brute CPU power, using a legacy discovery and name resolution (NetBIOS) and file access protocol (CIFS 1.0) Microsoft was about to phase out with Windows 10 initially, making it an optional install. With a smart update and JF support, much better results would be possible at lower CPU load.

And I've not talked about the know security vulnerable, many year long off any maintenance SAMBA Netgear has in place yet.

Even the SMB mounts on the R9000 Plex implementation for Media Library access on NAS (or Windows or Mac OS) could be done much better, with lower processor load and much better performance. Funny they implemented a very decent mount.cifs on the R9000 - but have not updated the cifs.ko accordingly. 

Grand-ma would run like a young sprinter if maintained properly 8-)

Can't see anything resolved in this thread....

I'll shut up now here. 

[aalexandrebeta]

@schumaku

"Grand-ma would run like a young sprinter if maintained properly 8-)" that is hilarious!!!!!

What surprise me a lot nowadays is that for example I own a 17 y/o modem router from SMC networks with print server capabilities. Last century tech can still blow youngster and they can learn a trick or 2 !!

They should code better!

[schumaku]

Yes, think about moving 9000 Bytes with the same (or even less) procesing effort than 1500 Bytes in SMB 3.0 protocol.

One more point? Most people with decent Windows systems at home use a Microsoft Account - read a username in a longer e-mail format and a password. Adding the same user account(s) ot the REadySHARE configuration would allow perfect transparent data access without a "login" and then the credentials store mess, which is known hard to manage for consumers. 

The problem is not bad code - the problem is the inability to change and dopt to current (many year old) technologies.

[aalexandrebeta]

"The problem is not bad code - the problem is the inability to change and dopt to current (many year old) technologies." The things achieved by those old technologies and huge limited ressources thay had back on time, nowadays technologies can do far far far better if the things were delivering the raw power! A bit like a Buggatti Chiron having a semi attached to him!!

[StephenB]

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@schumaku wrote:

All ReadySHARE performance numbers are achieved by maxing out the brute CPU power, using a legacy discovery and name resolution (NetBIOS) and file access protocol (CIFS 1.0) Microsoft was about to phase out with Windows 10 initially, making it an optional install. With a smart update and JF support, much better results would be possible at lower CPU load.

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I'm not as keen on jumbo frames as you might be, but overall I agree that ReadySHARE's performance and features could be improved.

Though in general I don't really like using my router for storage.  Connecting my storage to the edge router just feels like a bad practice.  I'd rather see Netgear put more resouces into building better firewall/security into the core routing functions.  

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@schumaku wrote:

Can't see anything resolved in this thread..... 

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I agree, there's just confirmation that the R7000 is delivering the same performance it did when tested by trustedreviews.

[schumaku]

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@StephenB wrote:

I'm not as keen on jumbo frames as you might be, but overall I agree that ReadySHARE's performance and features could be improved.

Though in general I don't really like using my router for storage.  Connecting my storage to the edge router just feels like a bad practice.  I'd rather see Netgear put more resouces into building better firewall/security into the core routing functions.

Yes - they must start with a configurable firewall for WAN->(W)LAN port forwarded as well as "DMZ" IP configurations.

But for now, storage, sharing, even cloud access are features. And JF became a de-facto standard...

Considering Netgear has dropped their substandard UTM product line (good decision), and mid to high end Nighthawks are sold at price tags where the competition does deliver _two_ capable, higly flexible configureable UTM devices (just not the great WiFi perfromance) ... friends of Netgear like you and me feel a little bit like left alone in the cold rain by the Netgear Taiwan Software "Engineering" group just continue on specs for NAT routers from 20 or more 25 years ago on better hardware.

[VE6CGX]

Router memory has buffer for files. Is the memory size same between two routers?

[StephenB]

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@VE6CGX wrote:

Router memory has buffer for files. Is the memory size same between two routers?

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The R9000 has 1 gb of ram; the R7000 has 256 mb.  

I'm not sure that affects the SMB performance, though it does seem plausible that the R9000 has a larger disk cache.

[aalexandrebeta]

@VE6CGX& @StephenB  is there a way to standardize and to make sure that the DHH is well configured and users enjoy the full extent of the router and the HDD?

Thanks!

[StephenB]

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@aalexandrebeta wrote:

@VE6CGX& @StephenB  is there a way to standardize and to make sure that the DHH is well configured and users enjoy the full extent of the router and the HDD?

Thanks!

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I don't know of any settings in the router that would let you tune the storage performance.

Generally speaking, the router "likes" hard drives with one partition, and NTFS formatting.  Other formats are supported (see https://kb.netgear.com/24059/What-are-the-USB-drive-requirements-for-my-Nighthawk-router?cid=wmt_net... ) - but exFAT in particular is not.

[schumaku]

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@StephenB wrote:
Generally speaking, the router "likes" hard drives with one partition, and NTFS formatting.

Don't forget the Linux native ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems not requiring any middleware as for all other non-native file systems.

The only reason not using ie. ext4 would be interoperability with Windows or macOS.

The amount of memory ... well, Linux tends to use all memory for generic I/O caching. But then, when comparing R7000 and R9000 ... the first one does not run Plex.

root@R9000:/# ps | grep mbd
10327 root 1144 S N /usr/sbin/smbd -D
10339 root 872 S N /usr/sbin/smbd -D
11977 root 1000 S /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
17530 root 112 S grep mbd
root@R9000:/#
root@R9000:/# ps | grep Plex
2121 root 26016 S N Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.system] /tmp/plexmediaserve
18684 root 112 S grep Plex
29799 root 33660 S ./Plex Media Server

There it goes the larger R9000 DRAM.

[StephenB]

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@schumaku wrote:

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@StephenB wrote:
Generally speaking, the router "likes" hard drives with one partition, and NTFS formatting.

Don't forget the Linux native ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems not requiring any middleware as for all other non-native file systems.

Yes, that likely is faster, and if you have a linux system on hand it's worth a try.