Slow network transfer speed to nas

[Yongtjunkit]

Hi, I was wondering why my network transfer speed is very slow. I'm using an Asus rt ac 68u (conected to 5ghz) but I'm getting around the speed shown in the video. It also does go down to 0 kbps too

 

 

 

51030155882__A338725B-FD0A-40BC-BFAE-0838434EE9CB.MOV

[Windows7ge]

Well let me ask is the file transfer test using multiple small files or one large file such as a 4GB .ISO? Multiple small files would show low speeds and random jumps as the files are transferred one by one and checked for errors.

 

If one large file is giving these issues there's a number of potential causes. Also why are you connecting to your NAS via Wi-Fi? I'd want a minimum full gigabit connection personally with hard copper cat5e/cat6.

 

Possible causes could be:

Drivers

Adapter compatibility (some adapters may only support 5GHz @ 54mbps or somewhere inbetween that and 300mbps)

Wi-Fi router firmware

The NAS may be configured incorrectly

Your client may be configured incorrectly

And a few others I can't recall at this time.

 

Easiest place to start. Is there another 5GHz @ 300Mbps compatible device around that you can use? Preferably a completely separate system? This will tell you if it could be something wrong with your client.

[Yongtjunkit]

13 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Well let me ask is the file transfer test using multiple small files or one large file such as a 4GB .ISO? Multiple small files would show low speeds and random jumps as the files are transferred one by one and checked for errors.

 

If one large file is giving these issues there's a number of potential causes. Also why are you connecting to your NAS via Wi-Fi? I'd want a minimum full gigabit connection personally with hard copper cat5e/cat6.

 

Possible causes could be:

Drivers

Adapter compatibility (some adapters may only support 5GHz @ 54mbps or somewhere inbetween that and 300mbps)

Wi-Fi router firmware

The NAS may be configured incorrectly

Your client may be configured incorrectly

And a few others I can't recall at this time.

 

Easiest place to start. Is there another 5GHz @ 300Mbps compatible device around that you can use? Preferably a completely separate system? This will tell you if it could be something wrong with your client.

It's multiple files(files like multiple word files, music, pictures) the wifi adapter is dlink dwa 172(usb), have another client that is 2.4ghz only and have the same issue. The reason I'm using wifi is its wireless as I don't want to drill hole and I recently bought this adapter. I'm running the latest firmware for the asus rt ac 68u. No idea is the nas or the client was configured incorrectly. The dlink wifi adapter has 433mbps 5ghz speed. 

 

[Windows7ge]

6 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

have another client that is 2.4ghz only and have the same issue

Then it's likely the issue is somewhere between the wireless router and the NAS.

 

To make sure it isn't any kind of wireless in general issue I'd very temporarily run a network cable from the router to your PC. Then try transferring files. If it's the same result it's probably something wrong with the NAS. Alternatively you can try plugging the PC directly into the NAS and manually configure the IP addressing. If it's the same result then you'll really know it's the NAS. If it works fine then it might be the router itself.

[Yongtjunkit]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Then it's likely the issue is somewhere between the wireless router and the NAS.

 

To make sure it isn't any kind of wireless in general issue I'd very temporarily run a network cable from the router to your PC. Then try transferring files. If it's the same result it's probably something wrong with the NAS. Alternatively you can try plugging the PC directly into the NAS and manually configure the IP addressing. If it's the same result then you'll really know it's the NAS. If it works fine then it might be the router itself.

The nas is wd my cloud and I've left it running for almost 24 hours, accessing file directory is also slower than usual (file transfer too) but can I try transfer between pc and see?

[Yongtjunkit]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Then it's likely the issue is somewhere between the wireless router and the NAS.

 

To make sure it isn't any kind of wireless in general issue I'd very temporarily run a network cable from the router to your PC. Then try transferring files. If it's the same result it's probably something wrong with the NAS. Alternatively you can try plugging the PC directly into the NAS and manually configure the IP addressing. If it's the same result then you'll really know it's the NAS. If it works fine then it might be the router itself.

The nas is wd my cloud and I've left it running for almost 24 hours (accessing file directory, file transfer and Web gui takes a long time to load) can I try transfer files between pc to test the issue?

[Windows7ge]

5 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

The nas is wd my cloud and I've left it running for almost 24 hours (accessing file directory, file transfer and Web gui takes a long time to load) can I try transfer files between pc to test the issue?

Well what we're doing is eliminating potential causes of the issue to try and isolate the cause. If every function is slow. File transfer, browsing directory tree, WebUI, then it's probably the NAS itself. You can try restarting it.

 

I wonder if a drive is failing. In the event that this is so it would explain why file transfer is so bad and slow performance of the directory tree. If the system has to process multiple errors it may slow down the WebUI.

[Yongtjunkit]

7 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Well what we're doing is eliminating potential causes of the issue to try and isolate the cause. If every function is slow. File transfer, browsing directory tree, WebUI, then it's probably the NAS itself. You can try restarting it.

 

I wonder if a drive is failing. In the event that this is so it would explain why file transfer is so bad and slow performance of the directory tree. If the system has to process multiple errors it may slow down the WebUI.

I've disabled media sever (dlna and iTunes) I've also reboot the nas and the Web gui feels responsive. Should I re-enable dlna and iTunes sever on the nas? If I were to run a hdd test which one should I run? Quick or full test( nas Web gui)

[Windows7ge]

13 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

I've disabled media sever (dlna and iTunes) I've also reboot the nas and the Web gui feels responsive. Should I re-enable dlna and iTunes sever on the nas? If I were to run a hdd test which one should I run? Quick or full test( nas Web gui)

Enable the bare minimum required services to perform file transfers and see if wireless file transfer speeds changed at all to your computer

 

There is software you can run on computers that will check if any sectors on the HDD have errors but it may not be an option to run such a test and sometimes drives can fail with no explanation or warning. Until we test the other variables lets assume the drives are fine. If we plugged a cable strait into the NAS to the PC and speeds are stable that would tell us that the drives are not the cause of the problem.

[Yongtjunkit]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

Enable the bare minimum required services to perform file transfers and see if wireless file transfer speeds changed at all to your computer

 

There is software you can run on computers that will check if any sectors on the HDD have errors but it may not be an option to run such a test and sometimes drives can fail with no explanation or warning. Until we test the other variables lets assume the drives are fine. If we plugged a cable strait into the NAS to the PC and speeds are stable that would tell us that the drives are not the cause of the problem.

The dlna and iTunes sever appears to reenabled by itself, maybe it didn't apply the changes since I changed that setting before shut down the nas. Trying to copy files from local disk to the nas does seems to have inconsistent transfer speed especially it went down to 0kbps over wifi with iTunes and dlna enable 

 

 

 

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, Yongtjunkit said:

The dlna and iTunes sever appears to reenabled by itself, maybe it didn't apply the changes since I changed that setting before shut down the nas. Trying to copy files from local disk to the nas does seems to have inconsistent transfer speed especially it went down to 0kbps over wifi with iTunes and dlna enable 

Is the WD My Cloud itself wireless or does it have a hard line to the router/switch?

 

I've always known WiFi to be really inconsistent with large file transfers. From my experience you'll never see a nice smooth line when transferring files over Wi-Fi. It's just not viable. Reasons why the 5.0Ghz 300mbps link is so spotty can be caused by simply the type of file you're transferring. Since it's Wi-Fi the very signals in the air around you could mess up a file transfer as every 1500 bit packet has to be sent over the air and it's integrity verified. If that fails then the packet has to be resent which can be displayed as sudden drops in speed or spikes on the network adapter activity indicator.

 

Beyond this I'm not really sure what else to recommend. Wi-Fi wasn't meant for transferring 10's of 100's of GB of files so the activity is going to be all over the place. Larger files should sustain a more stable higher connection while many small files will make the adapter activity jump all over. What's causing the adapter to not see 300mbps at all, like not even little jumps up to it i'm not sure the cause. Sorry.

 

Did you ever previously have a setup like this that worked or is this your first attempt?

[Yongtjunkit]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Is the WD My Cloud itself wireless or does it have a hard line to the router/switch?

 

I've always known WiFi to be really inconsistent with large file transfers. From my experience you'll never see a nice smooth line when transferring files over Wi-Fi. It's just not viable. Reasons why the 5.0Ghz 300mbps link is so spotty can be caused by simply the type of file you're transferring. Since it's Wi-Fi the very signals in the air around you could mess up a file transfer as every 1500 bit packet has to be sent over the air and it's integrity verified. If that fails then the packet has to be resent which can be displayed as sudden drops in speed or spikes on the network adapter activity indicator.

 

Beyond this I'm not really sure what else to recommend. Wi-Fi wasn't meant for transferring 10's of 100's of GB of files so the activity is going to be all over the place. Larger files should sustain a more stable higher connection while many small files will make the adapter activity jump all over. What's causing the adapter to not see 300mbps at all, like not even little jumps up to it i'm not sure the cause. Sorry.

 

Did you ever previously have a setup like this that worked or is this your first attempt?

It appears to work before but I didn't copy 300+gb. I probably copy less than 10gb at a time but than 300+gb file transfer is just 1 time and the test was conducted on a 2.4ghz wifi (with 5gb worth of music(this is also the same for 5ghz))enot 5ghz. 5ghz appears to bounce around but apparently doesn't go 10 mbps and below (better results than yesterday by just a reboot)

[Windows7ge]

32 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

It appears to work before but I didn't copy 300+gb. I probably copy less than 10gb at a time but than 300+gb file transfer is just 1 time and the test was conducted on a 2.4ghz wifi (with 5gb worth of music(this is also the same for 5ghz))enot 5ghz. 5ghz appears to bounce around but apparently doesn't go 10 mbps and below (better results than yesterday by just a reboot)

So results are fine on 2.4GHz but issues begin when you attempt 5Ghz. I wonder if it's the particular adapter you're using. I don't think it's a bottleneck because you'd at least be getting 2.4GHz speeds. Something must be misconfigured somewhere and I'm not sure what.

[Yongtjunkit]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

So results are fine on 2.4GHz but issues begin when you attempt 5Ghz. I wonder if it's the particular adapter you're using. I don't think it's a bottleneck because you'd at least be getting 2.4GHz speeds. Something must be misconfigured somewhere and I'm not sure what.

The adapter is a dlink dwa 172 with the latest driver downloaded from the uk website instead of Malaysia since the malaysia website doesn't show this model. The weird thing is its sold in a local it store 

[Windows7ge]

4 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

The adapter is a dlink dwa 172 with the latest driver downloaded from the uk website instead of Malaysia since the malaysia website doesn't show this model. The weird thing is its sold in a local it store 

 

Do you have another 5GHz compatible adapter around? One from a different manufacturer? I'm not sure what else to try if you've ruled out the NAS & router. Normally 5GHz shouldn't require any special configuration so I don't know why you're not seeing the speed.

[Yongtjunkit]

13 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

 

Do you have another 5GHz compatible adapter around? One from a different manufacturer? I'm not sure what else to try if you've ruled out the NAS & router. Normally 5GHz shouldn't require any special configuration so I don't know why you're not seeing the speed.

No other adapter for pc, iphone with 5ghz got and the adapter was advertised as wireless ac 600 but with the latest driver it shows up in task manager as wireless n (with the latest driver) but in the wifi analyser(from the windows store) shows wireless ac. If I used the driver from the cd then it shows up as wireless ac in task manager but slower transfer speed. Plugged this adapter in to another system and install the latest driver and it shows up as wireless ac. Copying 20gb of files gives me something like this results 

 

[Windows7ge]

Well this is closer to the desired result. If the adapter is capable of wireless ac the wireless router has to be capable of 5GHz wireless AC. Check the routers WebUI and see if the wireless has a manual option for it. If not what's the name of the router. I'll look it up.

[Yongtjunkit]

6 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Well this is closer to the desired result. If the adapter is capable of wireless ac the wireless router has to be capable of 5GHz wireless AC. Check the routers WebUI and see if the wireless has a manual option for it. If not what's the name of the router. I'll look it up.

The router is asus rt ac68u 

[Windows7ge]

9 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

The router is asus rt ac68u 

Alright it supports AC wireless. Did you check the computers Wi-Fi adapter settings? I think you can manually set which channel it uses. See if AC is an option.

[Yongtjunkit]

59 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Alright it supports AC wireless. Did you check the computers Wi-Fi adapter settings? I think you can manually set which channel it uses. See if AC is an option.

Driver settings in device manager? Also I do notice on 2.4ghz on another pc with built-in wifi when the file transfer is lower than expected like below 10 mbps on 2.4ghz the ping appears to increase 

[Yongtjunkit]

6 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Alright it supports AC wireless. Did you check the computers Wi-Fi adapter settings? I think you can manually set which channel it uses. See if AC is an option.

Here's the ping spike that I meant on 2.4ghz to the nas, a different pc with only 2.4ghz Qualcom adapter inside 

 

 

Here's the ping to the router on 2.4ghz system 

 

Apparently both of them have ping spike on 2.4ghz on the other end of the house and a different system for some reason.

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

Apparently both of them have ping spike on 2.4ghz on the other end of the house and a different system for some reason.

Wi-Fi does that. I can't give you an accurate answer as to why it's doing that but I assume it has something to do with establishing the connection and as the connection is established the ping gradually gets tighter. There are many variables involved with Wi-Fi which can cause it to do any number of things.

 

I was mistaken there is no such setting inside the PC. What you need to do is navigate the network to your router which is most likely 192.168.1.1

After getting there login to the router and navigate to the wireless 5GHz menu. In there or under an advanced tab menu of some sort you should find a page saying what "Wireless Mode" is being advertised. On mine I have the options of A/N/A&N. I'm to assume A means AC so if you find that not enabled enable it. Or try and force the Wi-Fi to use only A/AC and see if that gets your computers Wi-Fi adapter to cooperate using AC @ 5GHz.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'm going to admit I skimmed the thread but I wanted to throw in my two cents here: What any Wi-Fi adapter tells you about the network should be taken with a grain of salt. I've had a 2.4GHz network in my home and despite everything reporting to me that the signal strength was great, its reliability was terrible. I was within 30 feet of the router and there was only one wall (well, a cabinet as well) between me and the access point. I brought this up on another forum to see if they could throw some ideas out, but they did suggest that the reason why the network appears to be great but in reality sucks is because the system is only telling me the status based on the beacon packets the AP sends out.

 

In any case, 2.4GHz is also incredibly crowded and contested, so if you're in a dense area, moving to 5.0GHz should alleviate your Wi-Fi reliability issues.

 

Even then, I wouldn't use Wi-Fi for tending to the NAS. I went from accessing my NAS using 802.11ac to straight up Ethernet and it was a huge upgrade. Though it could've been that my Wi-Fi adapter was a single antenna and so it wasn't really all that much faster than 802.11n on a good day.

 

Speaking of which, Ars Technica released a pretty good article on Wi-Fi: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/802-eleventy-what-a-deep-dive-into-why-wi-fi-kind-of-sucks/

[Yongtjunkit]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Wi-Fi does that. I can't give you an accurate answer as to why it's doing that but I assume it has something to do with establishing the connection and as the connection is established the ping gradually gets tighter. There are many variables involved with Wi-Fi which can cause it to do any number of things.

 

I was mistaken there is no such setting inside the PC. What you need to do is navigate the network to your router which is most likely 192.168.1.1

After getting there login to the router and navigate to the wireless 5GHz menu. In there or under an advanced tab menu of some sort you should find a page saying what "Wireless Mode" is being advertised. On mine I have the options of A/N/A&N. I'm to assume A means AC so if you find that not enabled enable it. Or try and force the Wi-Fi to use only A/AC and see if that gets your computers Wi-Fi adapter to cooperate using AC @ 5GHz.

Wireless mode is on auto 

[Windows7ge]

35 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

Wireless mode is on auto 

Force it to use AC only on 5GHz and see if your computer connects to it. If it connects you'll know that your computers adapter is running 802.11ac. Then run your file transfer test again.

 

One other thing I can think of is see what channel it's running on. For 2.4GHz most commonly channels 1, 6, & 11 are used. The 5GHz band is diffrent numbers but follows a similar system. If you have many people around you using a channel on the 5GHz band it may cause issues for your communication. Switching channels can help correct it if this is the case. In other words it could be wireless interference.