Transmit speed to 4100+ has gone down

[sbelyo]

Today I was trying to get more read/write performance for the 4100+ over my gigabit network.

The best I had seen was 70 Mbps write/read

I connected the 4100 lan port directly to my pc and only saw maybe 1% of increased speed.

I checked to see if my nic supported jumbo frames, it did.

I enabled jumbo frames on the lan port and saw a major increase in speed while sending files from the 4100, but sending to the 4100 decreased to only 50 Mbps

I used TCP Optimizer and set the nic to optimal settings and saw no change

I disabled jumbo frames on both the 4100+ and the nic and it didn't go back to normal.

I used TCP Optimizer and set the nic back to normal and it didn't go back to normal

So I removed the direct connection and plugged my pc and the 4100+ back into my gigabit switch. Still no change

I can no longer get write speed above 50 Mpbs where before I used to get 70

I tried reloading firmware 2.0.03 No change

I tried loading beta firmware 2.0.04.3 No Change

I am at a loss, what should I do next?

[sbelyo]

Small glimmer of hope when I used a 25 ft crossover cable. The write performance went back up to 72 Mbps.

So what did I do, I decided to enable jumbo frames again. Big mistake, write performance went down to 50 Mbps.

I disabled jumbo frames and it's still at 50 Mbps

I know this box can do better.... Thecus needs to put some time into protocols

[sbelyo]

I think I narrowed down what's happening.

When jumbo frames are enabled write performance goes down and read stays the same.

When I disable jumbo frames write performance goes back up. This happens when directly connected or through a switch.

I checked my network card and my switch, they both support jumbo frames up to 7500.

Why would this happen

[smirnoff73]

Hi sbelyo,

What is your general opinion about Thecus N4100+? Does it function well as a streaming server, any speed or performance issues?

I'm thinking about buying one but cannot find a single useful review. I would really appreciate a first-hand opinion.

Thanks

[sbelyo]

It's excellent for streaming... I can stream an uncompressed DVD to 3 pc's without a problem... One of them was even wireless. It will give you roughly twice the performance of a 100 Mbps network connection when streaming.

The problem arises when you want to write info to it. I have never been able to get more than 73 Mbps write speed. So copying 6 Gig to it roughly takes 15 Min. The review on Tom's hardware guide has the same results. I'm hoping they can make better use of the processor in future firmwares. Even with this problem it's still the best box out there for the price. And you can choose to put enterprise level drives in it to increase disk life. Every other ethernet disk I can find that is cheaper has horrid reviews of slower than slow read/write speed and major reliability issues.

As you can see above I have tried everything I can think of to no avail. My take on it is that the processor is maxed out and can't use the full bandwith of the gigabit ethernet when writing to disk.

If you are going to use it to stream movies I think it's great. Just rip 100 gig at a time locally and then send it to the 4100+ and walk away for 90 Min.

[smirnoff73]

Thanks a lot! You convinced me, going to order the box today.

[sbelyo]

No Problem...

Just don't expect too much from the write speed

[smirnoff73]

By "Mbps" you mean MegaBits, not MegaBytes, right? 15 minutes for 6Gb seems to be a little bit slow. I just copied a 4.5Gb file to my external USB2.0 HDD, it took 2:30 at 30MBytes/sec. So NAS is going to be x8 time slower?

[sbelyo]

That's right... Bits not Bytes

I timed 1.8 Gigs in just under 4 minutes. That's 7.5 MB (Mega Bytes) per second

So Yes, it's slow to write. But you should have no problem streaming.

I just got a response from Tech support and they are actually getting slightly slower performance than me. So I think the 73 Mbps I'm getting is full out for this box.

I'll admit that I expected more speed when writing to the box, but I like the fact that you can choose your own hard drive, thus controlling quality. Some of those boxes out there put desktop level disks inside. For something that would be on up to 18 hours a day in my house that just wouldn't last more than 2 years.

For instance Western Digital's RE2 drives are 1.2 Million Hours before failure w/5 year warranty. That's 137 Years of 24/7 uptime!

[sbelyo]

I was able to squeeze 77 Mbps write speed out of this box today with an updated nic driver for the netgear GA311

Now if someone can only tell us if there is a CPU speed setting is adjustable by changing a jumper around

[smirnoff73]

Cool!

So you seriously think there's a jumper? I wonder if anybody disassembled the box and checked what's inside...

[sbelyo]

I found some post about running the 4100 "without the jumper". I couldn't find anything to back this up so I asked Tech support. They said there is no jumper on the motherboard to change cpu speed. Also upgrading the memory is useless

[darkmenace]

Sorry to revive an old thread but I found this one on a search for slow transfer speeds. Im a new 4100+ owner and having the same problems with slow speeds file transferring files over the network. Cant get any better than 50mbps (megabits ie 5MB/sec out of it.

I have read that the cpu is just a socket celeron chip that can easily be replaced like on a PC motherboard but I haven't opened mine up to check.

I dont know whether a faster cpu would make much difference or whether the system memory and speed of the bus on the mainboard would still inhibit it dramtically anyway.

[smirnoff73]

Not for N4100+, it has very slow Intel CPU 80219, and I don't think it's upgradable. 7.5MB/Sec is the maximum you can squeeze out of N4100+, under ideal conditions. If you want faster speeds, try N5200Pro. It has CeleronM CPU (I don't think it's upgradable) and can give you 25-35MB/Sec