Gigabit Ethernet running at Megabit speed :-(

[dwarfer16]

Hi All,

I have recently purchased a NAS (TS-109 Pro II) which I think is great and am really pleased with but as my current router is a very old Linsys which is only capible of 10/100 speeds I thought it was time to upgrade. Rather than buy a new router I decided to buy a Gigabit Switch from eBay. I got the Netgear GS605 which seems fine apart from I have a problem.

My NAS is definately gigabit as are the network ports on my mobo. The network connection on my PC is showing up as 1Gbps as you would expect and on top of all this, the light on the router for both of these devices is green rather than orange, indicating gigabit speeds. But I'm not getting them at all.

In fact I see no improvement whatsoever when transferring a file - still get speeds of around 8-11Mb/s which is what I got without the switch.

I think it has something to do with my network card drivers on my PC. In Device Manager Windows sees it as a nForce Networking Controller but the wierd thing I have noticed is that in the Advanced Settings under Speed there is no 1Gbps transfer speed setting, although it is set to Auto-negotiate, I have read some threads stating that changing it to Gbps could solve the problem.

Anything thing I have tried was plugging the switch into the NAS first before the router to make sure it transmits at gigabit and somehow doesn't get set by the router speed. When I turned my PC on it was recognised at megabit speed, the light was orange and my LAN conn. properties showed it was megabit. I think a it qas a quick Disable and Enable of the connection made this go back to gigabit - a bit wierd. So the switch is obviously thinking that my PC is transmiting at gigabit.

I have always had problems with this network adapter on my mobo as have lots of other people as well. I think it's a driver / vista issue. But I'm not sure if this is related to the current problem or not. I would like to test transferring directly to the nas without the switch but I haven't got a cross-over cable so can't test right now :-(

Anyways, sorry if I have waffled, I am half asleep right now!If anyone has any thoughts it would be appreciated!

Cheers,

Craig.

[SiM]

Have you enabled jumbo frames?

You need the same number set on your NAS and your PC

[Blastuk]

you don't need a crossover cable if your network card is capable of gigabit speeds, it's in the spec to be auto neogotiated.. you can use a patch cable.

also try the jumbo frames as suggested first.

[dwarfer16]

Thanks for the reply.

I thought a crossover cable would be needed when connecting the nas direct to PC?

I will try jumbo frames. I hadn't actually heard of them until I saw the setting on my nas and investigating this problem.

What exactly are jumbo frames?

Cheers,

Craig

[dwarfer16]

Right, I have now enabled Jumbo frames on both my NIC and NAS but exactly the same values were not available. On my NAS I could chose from 1500, 4074, 7418, and 9000. On my NIC I could chose from 1514, 2514, 4514, and 9014. I tried setting them both at the 9000 and 9014 options on each device but no speed increase on the network :-(

Cheers,

Craig

[dwarfer16]

Actually tell a lie. There is a slight speed increase from 8Mb/s to 11Mb/s when transferring the same file. Still not gigabit speeds though

[Funkstar]

There is no way you are going to get proper gigabit speeds from a little NAS like that. You actually struggle to get decent speeds from the large multi-drive NAS boxes like the Thecus N5200Pro and the N7700.

Having said that, it should be possible to get more than 11MB/sec

[PeteSmith]

If you use Vista disable IPv6 - same issues reported in many threads on these forums, do a quick search for more info. Here's a start http://forums.hexus.net/operating-sy...eds-vista.html

Microsoft KB article:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852

[dwarfer16]

I realise that I won't get gigabit speeds with my NAS but I would to just see some increase when using the gigabit switch but as far there hasn't been any increase at all.

THanks for hte suggestions - I have disabled all IPv6 options in the NIC and in the registry but not speed change - still hovering around 15MB/s.

In the tests I have been doing I have only been copying data to the NAS from my PC but when I tried it from the NAS to my PC, the rate was at about 26-28MB/s. Does anyone know what could be causing the transfer rate to be a lot less in one direction than the other?

I think I would be happy if I could get 28MB/s in either direction!

Cheers, Craig.

[Funkstar]

Write speeds are generally lower than read, this is true of just about any transfer, even on the quockest SSDs.

[Agent]

I find that making a large RAM drive with some files to copy over the network will soon show any bottlenecks

[Splash]

I'm possibly nitpicking, but your initial post says

still get speeds of around 8-11Mb/s which is what I got without the switch

(my bold, obviously)

And your later posts state

still hovering around 15MB/s

Which is it? Mb/s and MB/s are massively varying measurements. 15MB/s is equivalent to 120Mb/s.

[dwarfer16]

Splash - you are quite right to nitpick, what a typo in my first post. I understand the difference between Mb and MB and it likewise annoys me when other people do not, especially Broadband salesmen! I meant to say 8-11MB/s originally. I am now up to about 15MB/s.

My Bad.

[dwarfer16]

Now I have a new problem!

I have resigned my to the speeds I am currently getting as it did show some increase with jumbo frames enabled to 9000. But now I have noticed that the web interface of the NAS isn't working as a result of the jumbo frames. As soon as I disabled the jumbo frames, I could access the NAS from the web again.

So now I have a trade off, access the NAS but have slow speed, or enable JF, have fast speed but no internet access to the NAS, Argghh.

My router is an old Linksys one which doesn't support jumbo frames and has the MTU default 1500 so I'm guessing that is why I cannot access the NAS online with JF enabled :-(

[Blastuk]

why would your router have anything to do with it if both the pc and nas are hanging off the same switch?

[Singh400]

I found that increasing my jumbo frames size actually decreased my internal speeds. So I've put them back to default/disabled.

Easiest thing to do is to change the speed from Auto to 1000 Full Duples / 1GB FD. On both sides.