I have a 1 year old iMac 24" with OS 10.11.5 operating system, hardwired to Netgear unmanged 16 port switch. I'm running a 100Mb backbone on this particular LAN branch back to switch (2 pairs on Cat5e connected). The switch is then running a 1Gb link to the RN316. The switch rides off of my Fios ActionTec router, again with a 1Gb link. I also access this same switch with a 2011 MacBook Air, wirelessly via an Apple Airport Extreme set up in bridging mode. Laptop has same setup / OS version / configuration as the iMac.
Current operating system for RN316 is 6.5.0.
I find speed of interface on the iMac to be disappointing and generally much slower than my old Ultra6. The issue appears to be related to whether the iMac has gone to sleep from a fresh boot. Sleep means long delay in Finder window (File Explorer) log on (currently set to automatically log on as Admin with Admin password). If Mac has previously gone to sleep, Finder may take 20-30 seconds for full screen of shares/directory folders to appear. Once folders appear, accessing modest sized files of < 1MB may take 15-30 seconds. Spinning colored pinwheel is common. Speed problem is common but not consistently an issue, since sometimes things seem fine in terms of speed to access. Tonight as I was watching video (MPG file format), after waking from sleep, I was consistently faced with studdering video indicating that streaming rate from RN316 was inadequate maintain video playback. A fresh reboot almost always solves the long delays in Finder screen and file access.
Using my MacBook Air (with much slower CPU), Finder is generally faster to refresh and I've seldom had file access problems. That despite the MacBook Air connecting wirelessly (N) via the Airport Extreme and then up to the same 16 port Netgear switch. While I wouldn't call the MacBook Air initial Finder refresh "fast" (it often takes 50-75% of time of the iMac), it's not agnonizing like the iMac refresh is. Plus, i don't seem to have the same issues with individual file access once my MacBook Air wakes from sleep.
I'm looking for experiences from the board that can help me troubleshoot the disappointing file access from my desktop - after waking from sleep. While I know how to fix the problem with a reboot, I don't want to rely on that technique as its a real time waster.
Have you tried connecting the iMac straight to the switch where the RN316 is connected and check if it gets the same connection problem?
It could be the travel time that computer takes to reach the whole network to talk to LAN devices when it wakes up, so try isolating the problem first.
Yup. As I explained above, that's how it is connected already. Remember, the jist of my issue is that iMac connectivity with the RN316 is miserable after it wakes after going to sleep. To have a usable connection MOST OF THE TIME, I have to reboot the iMac. After reboot, the connection is tolerable.
Can you try connecting the wireless capable machine wired to the switch where the NAS is and disable its wireless functionality then see the same performance?
That's hard to do. MacBook Air is pretty much a wireless machine. I don't have adapters for LAN connection - and if I did, the connection would be at USB speed.
There are a couple of posts on other forums on OSX systems having very slow access when they wake up. Might be worth googling.
My take on the posts is that the OSX system tries to access the share before its network connection is back up - and then blocks i/o until it times out. But I don't use macs...
I think StephenB "has it". My complaint appears to be a problem that is Mac related and seems to stem from slow remounting of NAS drives after a Mac goes to sleep. There are lots of posts out there on this subject and they don't appear to be ReadyNAS or OS6.5 related specific. While I don't understand why reconnects are faster on my MacBook Air than on my iMac, I see multiple posts off this community site that talk about ways to automatically remount shares when a Mac wakes from sleep. They all seem to involve tweaking the Mac "Auto_Master" file to automatically load shares to a new folder (or directory) that is created strictly for holding mounted shares. I'm going to crawl on this one first trying a manual mount each time I wake up the iMac (via <cmd><k> "connect to server" via Finder). If that proves to be a predictable solution, I'll then follow one of the routines that automount NAS shares and report back on this thread later.
I'm surprised that with all the Mac users out there, that this isn't an often discussed issue on this Community.
