Synology DS214 Data transfer

[ItsJustMartijn]

So, I have been researching and experimenting for well over ten hours and I can't figure out what is wrong.

Current "setup": Asus RT-AC87U and DS214 with one 1TB WD Red.
The problem is that I am only getting transfer speeds of 3-7 MB/s.
I tried transferring data with 4 different pc's, over wifi, lan, changing router settings, changing NAS settings, you name it, I've done it.

Can someone help me out?

[alex75871]

Have you tried a different harddrive?

[Dark]

Mainly because of it's ARM based CPU.

ARM based NAS devices have horrible transfer speeds.

[ItsJustMartijn]

14 hours ago, Dark said:

Mainly because of it's ARM based CPU.

ARM based NAS devices have horrible transfer speeds.

I have found out that when I connect my NAS directly to my pc, I get transfer speeds of 90MB/s to 105MB/s. So drive and cpu are fine.

Now I have to find out what settings on my router cause the slowness.

[Dark]

What method are you using to directly connect it to your pc?

[ItsJustMartijn]

7 minutes ago, Dark said:

What method are you using to directly connect it to your pc?

Cat 5e from NAS to laptop, NAS set to a manual IP.

[jimistephen]

Well, if you take your network out of the equations and you don't get a bottleneck I think we found you problem. Have you tried laptop -> router -> NAS and see what you speeds are?

[ItsJustMartijn]

22 minutes ago, jimistephen said:

Well, if you take your network out of the equations and you don't get a bottleneck I think we found you problem. Have you tried laptop -> router -> NAS and see what you speeds are?

Laptop >router>Nas gives the same speed as Laptop>Nas.

Now I am both happy and confused.

What should I change? Wifi settings? Or is it normal to have 1/20th of the Lan speed on wireless?

[jimistephen]

Well, I'd see what WIFI card you have in your laptop. I'd also look at your wifi settings. Most Routers say with 4 ports on it, count the wifi as just an extra port, and ALL OF YOUR WIFI is going down that one port. If your Laptop -> Router-> NAS with a wire to the laptop is getting the same speed as Laptop -> NAS we've narrowed down your problem to the wifi.

[ItsJustMartijn]

20 minutes ago, jimistephen said:

Well, I'd see what WIFI card you have in your laptop. I'd also look at your wifi settings. Most Routers say with 4 ports on it, count the wifi as just an extra port, and ALL OF YOUR WIFI is going down that one port. If your Laptop -> Router-> NAS with a wire to the laptop is getting the same speed as Laptop -> NAS we've narrowed down your problem to the wifi.

Wifi card in my laptop is: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485

I think it is irrelevant but speedtest gives 90Mbit down 20Mbit up.

We have indeed narrowed the problem down to wifi.

What are settings to look for when I look at the network settings of my wifi card and router?

 

[jimistephen]

What router do you have? How many wireless devices are attached to it?

[ItsJustMartijn]

3 minutes ago, jimistephen said:

What router do you have? How many wireless devices are attached to it?

Asus AC-RT87U, 11 devices. Most of those are just connected for instant messaging, no streaming etc.

 

[jimistephen]

Okay, While you have a good new router, you are taking one "port" and sharing the data on 11 devices. Moreover they routers are half duplex, which means that anytime one devices is trying to talk to the router all the others have to wait. Turn off all your other devices, or at least the wifi on them for a minute and see what you speed to the NAS then.

[jimistephen]

Even if you aren't using them at the time, if something is connect and "on" (stand-by on some devices also) it's pinging the router all the time to make sure it's still there.

[ItsJustMartijn]

18 minutes ago, jimistephen said:

Okay, While you have a good new router, you are taking one "port" and sharing the data on 11 devices. Moreover they routers are half duplex, which means that anytime one devices is trying to talk to the router all the others have to wait. Turn off all your other devices, or at least the wifi on them for a minute and see what you speed to the NAS then.

The speed does go up a little with no wireless devices connected, but does not exceed 10 MB/s.
What would you recommend? Would I be better off buying a network switch?

[jimistephen]

No, probably not. You're never going to get the speeds of a wire with wireless, You can set up your QoS to have traffic going to the NAS take priority over everything else so it'll not slow down as much.

[ItsJustMartijn]

26 minutes ago, jimistephen said:

No, probably not. You're never going to get the speeds of a wire with wireless, You can set up your QoS to have traffic going to the NAS take priority over everything else so it'll not slow down as much.

Good idea, I will do that.

Thanks for clearing things up!

[Smite]

Please note you are using AC Router and a up to "n" Wireless nic. Make sure you are optimizing for N and not AC. Some routers/Access Points have settings designed to slow traffic on certain connections.