DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

You find your problem, which, I might add is not the DNS-323, and fix it.

Start by looking at your network infrastructure -

Do you have a hub or a switch?
What speed is your network - 10mbps/100mbps/1000mbps?
Are you using wireless, is it 802.11b or 802.11g?
Where are you transferring the files from - how fast does it transfer from one computer to another?

My DNS-323 is good for around 8MB/s on 100 mbps ethernet and about double that on gigabit ethernet.

Please bear in mind that the transfer speed will be limited to that of the slowest device in the chain.

Christof999 wrote:

Is it feasible to use this thing to load movies ?

For example if Im at my computer and I want to watch a film thats 1 GB in size, how long will it take to load up ? It it feasible or should I simply return the device.

My other machines get really fast speeds transferring to each other, some are wired , other are wireless.

You haven't answered a single question I asked, and now you're asking know how long it'll take to transfer a 1GB file - well the answer is - it depends.

On my network about 60 seconds.  On your's - what do I look like?  A magician?

fordem is right, there must be something wrong with your network. The odds of the DNS being faulty look slim.

As a matter of interest, I could watch a HD 1080i mpeg2 movie on my PC from the DNS-323 (wired 10/100) while my daughter watches the same movie (but watching  different places in the movie) on her PC (wireless Netgear 108mbps) and both computers would be showing network load of about 12.5%... and glitch free viewing at that.

Since then I have placed a 5-port gigabit switch in the loop so my PC is talking to the DNS-323 at gigabit speeds.

Using a stop watch I measured my write performance to the DNS using a 1.091GB video file:

10/100 link     8.66 MB/s (69Mb/s)
Gigabit link   16.3 MB/s (130Mbps)

Hope this helps

Edit: The movie should start playing immediately unless the disks are spun down, then maybe a 2-3 second delay.

Last edited by DoubleJet (2007-07-11 08:54:21)

Christof999 wrote:

Thanks that does help.

Its suddenly jumped to 3.9 MB/s. I have no idea why. Id really like to mount these disks via NFS. Is there any documentation on this ?

C.

Christof999, maybe you should first of all connect the DNS-323 box directly to a PC with gigabit lan
capabilities to find out yourself what is possible and what is impossible.
This should give the highest possible speed you can expect.

In a second step you may want to localize the other bottlenecks you seem to have in your network.
Just my 2 cent ...

Christof999 wrote:

What if I upgrade a few computers and my router to 1000Mbps, but keep a few 10 or 100Mbps devices, will there be any advantage for the equipment that is 1000Mbps, or will it simply be a waste of money unless I upgrade ALL network components to 1000 Mbps ?

If you find a good DSL router with 1000Mbps - I couldn't.

Anyway, probably a cheap solution (and what I am using) is to buy a 1000 Mbps Switch (5 or 8 ports are less then 100 Euros). Connect one port of your router to the switch and your PCs and the DNS to the switch. Eventually get 10/100/1000 cards for some of the PCs (two have already as I see).

For me this works quite well.

The slower (100Mbps) devices will not slow down the faster ones as far as I know - the switch can deal with 10/100/1000 bandwidths and assign individually per port.

Cheers,

Emacs

transstilben wrote:

Christof999 wrote:

Thanks that does help.

Its suddenly jumped to 3.9 MB/s. I have no idea why. Id really like to mount these disks via NFS. Is there any documentation on this ?

C.

Christof999, maybe you should first of all connect the DNS-323 box directly to a PC with gigabit lan
capabilities to find out yourself what is possible and what is impossible.
This should give the highest possible speed you can expect.

In a second step you may want to localize the other bottlenecks you seem to have in your network.
Just my 2 cent ...

Can you give me a start on where to look so I can learn how to localize bottlenecks ?

Emacs had an excellent idea of getting a Gigabit switch, and connecting the gigabit computers and the DNS-323 together.

Is this what you are talking about ?

Thanks
C

One more question..

Will adding a Gigabit unmanaged Switch cause slow downs on the network since I already have a router ?

I am looking at this one..

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ … CatId=2790

One reviewer says that "If your modem is already a router like my ''Westell 6100'' you do not need a network router all you need is a simple switch-like this one. A second router may cause slowdowns and conflicts."

Any thoughts ?

vthinsel wrote:

What makes a switch intelligent (hub are dumb) is its ablility to mix several speed. It buffers data (to some extent). Each port can have a different speed/duplex mode.
I have roughly 15MB/s on my gig ethernet switch, falling to 7MB/s on the 100Mbps switch on the WiFi AP (see attached pic). On the laptop using wifi in 54g, well,... much much less.....

Whoa - don't go confusing people.

First - there are dual speed hubs, so you don't need a switch to "mix speeds" and whilst your average switch might have more intelligence than your average hub, I have hubs with more processing power than some switches on the market, so you can put away the idea that "hubs are dumb".

What makes a switch, a switch, is the ability to forward data packets to the switch port to which the host that the packet is intended for is connected, and not broadcast it to all ports, which is what a hub would do.

Hubs created shared media networks - when one host transmits data, all the hosts on the network receive it, the host it is addressed to will process the packets, and all others will discard it.  This can create a very busy network, but one which is not productively busy.

Imagine, if you can, CB radio or walkie talkies, where everyone with a radio on that channel hears every transmission, which is intended for only one person.  As long as those two persons are "conversing" no one else can use the channel.  That's how hubs work.

Switches on the other hand, read the destination addresses in the data packet and figure where to send the packet  instead of sending to every one - this is like a telephone system, where multiple conversations can take place at the same time.

Also - for what it's worth - a direct connection will probably be no faster than a good switch, and I don't know if I'm misunderstanding your last post, but adding an unmanaged switch will not cause a problem.

Last edited by fordem (2007-07-12 01:18:11)

Whoa - don't go confusing people.
First - there are dual speed hubs, so you don't need a switch to "mix speeds" and whilst your average switch might have more intelligence than your average hub, I have hubs with more processing power than some switches on the market, so you can put away the idea that "hubs are dumb".

I have one of those dual speed, because network capture is more easy  with a hub, as they replicate all traffic on all ports.
Maybe I was a bit too strong, but I still believe switch are smarter as they do processing on level link layer, while hubs are on physical layer. Switch keep mac/port table lookup tables to know on which port the incoming packets should be forwarded. So in terms of being smart, switch are smarter.

Also - for what it's worth - a direct connection will probably be no faster than a good switch, and I don't know if I'm misunderstanding your last post, but adding an unmanaged switch will not cause a problem.

But it can't be slower, provided you are using a good cable (cat5 or cat6) as you mention. This would be the "best case".

One question on switch with mixed 10Mb/100Mb/1000Mb: with TCP, when the switch buffer is full the windowing will reduce the rate, with no packet loss This is TCP behavior by design. What happens with UDP ? I'll check what protocol samba is using.....

Vincent.

Sure.

Not everyone needs switch trunking, or mirroring. Few I assume. Could you point me to an affordable switch with mirror capacities ?
Of course, you can add SNMP and other stuff, even to 10Mb hubs making them "smarter" than basic switch that only......switch traffic. Depends on what you are looking for.  As an end-user, a basic one fits my needs. As a sysadmin/netadmin/geek I want everything.

Cheers,
Vincent.

Thanks for the reference. This is the price I got some years ago for my "basic" GS105...... maybe it is time to upgrade ?

Back to the original topic....
Any idea on what happens when using UDP with mixed 10/100 connections ? If nothing is done on the application level, packets get simply dropped, correct ?

Vincent.