tips to increase traffic (bonding)

[artkaos]

Hello,
 
I'am french, sorry for my english.
I dont find help on french support.
 
I have a RN104 and actualy i choose LACP on my RN104 and my switch. i'ts work but i dont win more speed.
Why ?
I thought that by consolidating ethernet links I would double speed
 
This is my screenshots RN104 + Switch Microsens
 

 

 
 
i read this page but ... its not very explicit and they dont speek about speed transfert.
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23076/~/what-are-bonded-adapters-and-how-do-they-work-...
 
 Does i need to choose diffrent setting ?
 
Thanks for your advice,

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

Bonding doesn't double your speed.  Each traffic flow through the bond is still limited to 1 gigabit.  The reason is that the link between the switch and the client is limited to 1 gigabit anyway, so it really can't go any faster.

Bonding can improve performance if you have multiple clients trying to use the NAS simultaneously (each client is limited to 1 gbit, but the total traffic to all clients can reach 2 gigabits).  

But the RN104 really isn't fast enough to reach one gigabit speeds.  So even though it supports bonding, it can't take advantage of the extra bandwidth.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

Bonding doesn't double your speed.  Each traffic flow through the bond is still limited to 1 gigabit.  The reason is that the link between the switch and the client is limited to 1 gigabit anyway, so it really can't go any faster.

Bonding can improve performance if you have multiple clients trying to use the NAS simultaneously (each client is limited to 1 gbit, but the total traffic to all clients can reach 2 gigabits).  

But the RN104 really isn't fast enough to reach one gigabit speeds.  So even though it supports bonding, it can't take advantage of the extra bandwidth.

[artkaos]

Damned

Thanks for your help, 

I thought to increase bandwidth whith bonding, actualy, i have 30 or 45/MB/s.

I bought a switch for nothing 🙂

[StephenB]

Though it is painful, you probably could increase the throughput if you did a factory reset (rebuilding the NAS and restoring all the data from backup).  I did that a couple months ago with my RN102, and saw a marked increase in speeds (around 70 MB/s if I remember correctly).  Though I use jbod, not xraid.

If you want to try that, perhaps wait for 6.5 to be released.

[artkaos]

Does the upgrade to 6.5 erase all my datas ?

[StephenB]

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@artkaos wrote:

Does the upgrade to 6.5 erase all my datas ?

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No it doesn't.  Of course a factory reset will.

What firmware are you running now?

[artkaos]

I use 6.4.2

Do you use the bonding ?

[StephenB]

I use it in my Pro-6, though I've never tried to measure the improvement.  Basically I use it because I can - my switch supports it, and I have enough ports in the switch that I can connect both.

My RN102 only has one NIC, so it can't run there.  My RN202 does have two NICs, and I did test bonding on it, but I don't actually use it.  The RN202 is used for backup, so there usually is only one user (the pro-6).  

The truth is that there isn't a lot of benefit for most home users.  

The way it works is that the source/destination mac addresses (and/or IP addresses) determine which ethernet NIC is assigned to carry each traffic flow.  So if you have 2 simulaneous users, there is a 50-50 chance that they will both be assigned to the the same ethernet connection to the NAS.  So with two users there's only a 50% chance that both ethernet connections will actually be used.  

As the number of simultaneous users goes up, the load balances across the connections.  But for just a couple of users it often doesn't balance very well.

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@artkaos wrote:

I use 6.4.2

[artkaos]

Unfortunatly i'am alone 🙂

Anyway, thank's a lot for you help.

Bye !

[jonl0711]

If I understand what's being said bonding is more for load balancing than increasing speed.

So If I have 2 NIC on my PC to my ProSafe Switch and have bonded the RN314, you are saying that this will not increase the speed from workstation to NAS?

If that is the case is there a way to double the speed, I ask because as a photographer I'm trying to backup over 10 TB of images to the ReadyNAS unit and the last time I tried it took several days for this to happen on a FreeNAS system.

[artkaos]

it seems to be like that but I'm skeptical, i'm sure there is a solution to increase the banwitch whith bonding.

[StephenB]

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@jonl0711 wrote:

If I understand what's being said bonding is more for load balancing than increasing speed.

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Yes.  

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@jonl0711 wrote:

So If I have 2 NIC on my PC to my ProSafe Switch and have bonded the RN314, you are saying that this will not increase the speed from workstation to NAS?

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Well, I said that on the switch->NAS connection the odds are 50-50 with two clients uploading.   On the PC side, the PC will decide what outbound NIC on the PC to use for each flow.  If that decision is not under your control, the odds drop to 25% (50% chance that PC->switch isn't using both NICs, 50% chance switch->NAS isn't using both NICs).  If you could set up static LAGS using round-robin on both devices you might get 2x the network bandwidth.

If the files are already on the FreeNAS you can migrate from the FreeNAS using NFS.  That would likely take less than 2 days (as you probably know, copy speeds are fastest if the files are large, and you haven't said how big the shadowprotect output is).  But it might be faster to just copy the data than spend a lot of time on experimentation.

We should just use one thread for the data migration discussion (either one is fine, so perhaps just pick one for your reply).

[StephenB]

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@artkaos wrote:

it seems to be like that but I'm skeptical, i'm sure there is a solution to increase the banwitch whith bonding.

If you had a faster NAS and a lot of clients, then bonding would help.  If you have bonding in the client, and know how to set up static LAGs, then bonding can help.

But even you had 10 gigabit NICs your speed won't go up - the RN104 simply isn't fast enough.