Where is the bottleneck?

[BeardedGuszti]

Hi guys,

 

I have a NAS for my photography business, I find it cheaper and easier to store my stuff local rather than in the cloud. BUT! I oftentimes need remote access which I luckily have (Tailscale VPN).

My issue, however, is that the up-and download is terribly slow from remote. I have two internet connections: one in my studio (the NAS is located there) with 1Gbps and another at home at 1Gbps, yet I find that the up-dowload is around 2Mbps overall. This makes life haaaard. I am not sure if the problem is with the internet/Tailscale/NAS, but I suspect that I do not have enough RAM. Also the NAS is pretty old.

 

NAS spec:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz

 

Do I need more RAM, a beefier CPU, both or neither and that's as good as it gets for me?

 

Thanks in advance!

[bezza...]

is the nas faster in the house? if you want to upgrade the hardwhare you will see more performance with more ram but it seems like you have a wifi bottlneck as my nas which is much worse than that gets 30 is megabites per second

[Bismut]

4 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

up-dowload is around 2Mbps overall

What's your promised upload speed (what the ISP says on the contract)?

 

5 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

Do I need more RAM, a beefier CPU, both or neither and that's as good as it gets for me?

Neither would *hurt* but I would recommend stress-testing the NAS to see where the problem lies. Look at what component(s) is/are maxed out when you download things elsewhere and upgrade those.

[Budget DIY]

If OP uses HDD's, and "just drags and drops", I don't see why the NAS itself would be too slow. I'd look at software issues, if local network speeds are as to be expected. (which probably includes checking for maybe some bandwith issues in the modem? I dunno)

[jaslion]

Is the gigabit your local internet speed or the actual isp speed?

 

Do a speedtest like the one from ookla and see what that gives.

 

How are you transferring files atm? Is it a direcr copy paste from the vpn?

 

A lot of vpns have limited transfer rates if they do not get a direct connection. Can you verify that the connect is direct and not via a relay? Tailscale has a function for that.

 

 

[manikyath]

those 'one-click setup' point-to-point VPN solutions tend to be slow AF, so i wouldnt be surprised if that's where your problem lies.

 

if you rely on this for your business operation, i'd suggest just looking into a business router that has a builtin VPN server, so you can just directly connect to your business network.

 

the draytek vigor2927 series for example is fairly affordable. setup is a bit of a pain, but once it's up and running nothing beats a direct connection. https://www.draytek.com/products/vigor2927/

here's me still hoping linksys will one day get their heads out their asses and replace the LRT214... but so far all we get is half-baked cisco solutions.

[BeardedGuszti]

Guys thanks a lot for the comments, see my answers below:

1 hour ago, Bismut said:

What's your promised upload speed (what the ISP says on the contract)?

@BismutIt's 600-800Mbps in both directions, most of the times it caps out at around 770Mbps, which i think is fine for a 1Gbps connection.

 

56 minutes ago, Budget DIY said:

If OP uses HDD's, and "just drags and drops", I don't see why the NAS itself would be too slow. I'd look at software issues, if local network speeds are as to be expected. (which probably includes checking for maybe some bandwith issues in the modem? I dunno)

@Budget DIY Modem, router and switch are all set up by me ( I used to work at a telco company in the network department, it's a piece of cake), I also tried several software (trueNAS seems to be the best -- controversially).

 

1 hour ago, Tomberry said:

is the nas faster in the house?

@Tomberry nope, that's why I suspect the NAS itself to be at fault, but you never know with a remote connection.

1 hour ago, Tomberry said:

(...) but it seems like you have a wifi bottlneck (...)

This would be an easy explanation, but unfortunately when I tried it over LAN, I ran into the s

 

ame issue.

 

@manikyath thanks for the advise, I'll look into it.

 

53 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Is the gigabit your local internet speed or the actual isp speed?

 

Do a speedtest like the one from ookla and see what that gives.

 

How are you transferring files atm? Is it a direcr copy paste from the vpn?

 

A lot of vpns have limited transfer rates if they do not get a direct connection. Can you verify that the connect is direct and not via a relay? Tailscale has a function for that.

@jaslion It's around 600-800Mbps IRL, which is sufficient, yet the upload shouldn't be 2Mbps imo.
Can you guide me where I can find that function in Tailscale?

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

nope, that's why I suspect the NAS itself to be at fault, but you never know with a remote connection.

You dont have the vpn running when in the same network right?

 

It beinf at 2mb/s is REALLY strange.

 

What os is it running?

 

Might be time for some local performance testing and temp checking

[BeardedGuszti]

16 minutes ago, jaslion said:

You dont have the vpn running when in the same network right?

 

It beinf at 2mb/s is REALLY strange.

No I don't need it when I am on that network. I might just try to connect my laptop directly to the NAS and see what happens.

The NAS is running on TrueNAS rn, all network related settings are rock solid, that shouldn't be an issue.

[jaslion]

15 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

No I don't need it when I am on that network. I might just try to connect my laptop directly to the NAS and see what happens.

Best to see what that gives first as this performance is very odd.

 

I mean I have a 20tb nas with a potato athlon 5150 and 8gb of ram. It easily does 60-80MB/s even when copying gigabytes of texture libraries.

 

It ain happy doing it but it does it fine

[An0maly_76]

 

1 hour ago, BeardedGuszti said:

NAS spec:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz

 

Do I need more RAM, a beefier CPU, both or neither and that's as good as it gets for me?

 

Thanks in advance!

Just a thought, I did two LGA1155 builds recently on Intel DH77EB boards. Specs indicated the board supported 1600 Mhz DDR3, but only for 3rd gen, not 2nd gen. Also, this Intel page shows the i5-2400 supports 1066 / 1333. So I don't know if this is a 2nd-gen thing, or just specific to that particular board. RAM issues can definitely affect performance -- ask me how I know.

Edited January 19, 2023 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[BeardedGuszti]

Thanks @An0maly_76, it is also possible, I wasn't aware of the 2nd gen not being compatible with 1600 RAMs, will look into that.

[An0maly_76]

4 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

Thanks @An0maly_76, it is also possible, I wasn't aware of the 2nd gen not being compatible with 1600 RAMs, will look into that.

Like I said, just a thought. But if that is an issue and the board can support more of the same RAM and a 3rd-gen, you could probably score these quite cheaply on eBay. I bought an i7-2600 and a couple 16GB DDR3-1333 Micron kits for less than you'd think. I'd probably look at the i7-3770 or 3770K - 4 cores, 8 threads. If a 3rd gen is not supported, the i7-2600 is a 4-core, 8 thread also.

Edited January 19, 2023 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info

[An0maly_76]

@BeardedGuszti

 

I forgot to mention, the i7-2600 has a K variant as well. But neither are supposed to support DDR3-1600.

[BeardedGuszti]

I found the issue, and yes, it is Tailscale... Without it I can get a 3GB file on the NAS in about 25 seconds which is reasonable (over WiFi).

 

So.. any other suggestion how can I access the NAS from offsite?

[LIGISTX]

42 minutes ago, BeardedGuszti said:

I found the issue, and yes, it is Tailscale... Without it I can get a 3GB file on the NAS in about 25 seconds which is reasonable (over WiFi).

 

So.. any other suggestion how can I access the NAS from offsite?

WireGuard. 
 

Tailscale shouldn’t be an issue either, but IIRC if it doesn’t see a direct path out, it will do some pretty cool things to navigate multiple NATed connections etc.

 

But assuming you are not behind a CGNAT and you can open ports on your router, just use WireGuard. Something to remember tho, when encrypting traffic, that does take CPU power, and it can take a lot of CPU power especially if your CPU doesn’t have specific hardware on it for doing cryptography. This may be your actual issue… or not. According to Intel ARK, your CPU does have AES instruction set. Ya, I’d give WireGuard a try. 

 

 

[Jarsky]

6 hours ago, BeardedGuszti said:

I found the issue, and yes, it is Tailscale... Without it I can get a 3GB file on the NAS in about 25 seconds which is reasonable (over WiFi).

 

So.. any other suggestion how can I access the NAS from offsite?

Use Wireguard. Pretty sure theres a jail for it in TrueNAS so you could run it on there. 

Its very fast and because its self hosted you wont be dealing with MitM network issues. 

 

If you have a dynamic IP then youd want to set up a dynamic dns as well. Plenty of free choices out there