Home LAN Speed Bottleneck

[ankitrana85]

Hi All,

 

In my home network, i have a gigabit switch (Model: TL-SG108E 3.0) plugged into the wireless router (Tp link Archer C20' lan port).   

I have my home Ubuntu server, NAS (ReadyNAS 214) and other devices plugged into the ethernet port of the switch. All these devices have gigabit NIC.

 

I assumed that any device connected on switch will be capable of gigabit speeds however when i transfer files between my NAS and my UBUNTU desktop, the speeds are not that fast.  I used RSYNC to show the speed, and i have NAS partition mounted on UBUNTU server under /media/test/T1

 

here are the transfer results:

Quote

rsync -r -t -v --progress --ignore-existing /home/test/Desktop/temp /media/test/T1/tem

sending incremental file list
temp/
temp/vid1.mkv
    264,053,827 100%   68.33MB/s    0:00:03 (xfr#1, to-chk=4/6)
temp/vid2.mkv
    288,068,499 100%   41.96MB/s    0:00:06 (xfr#2, to-chk=3/6)
temp/vid3.mkv
    343,008,184 100%   49.74MB/s    0:00:06 (xfr#3, to-chk=2/6)
temp/vid4.mkv
    304,004,260 100%   41.86MB/s    0:00:06 (xfr#4, to-chk=1/6)
temp/vid5.mkv
    362,097,271 100%   48.13MB/s    0:00:07 (xfr#5, to-chk=0/6)

sent 1,561,613,751 bytes  received 115 bytes  49,575,043.37 bytes/sec
total size is 1,561,232,041  speedup is 1.00
Rsync process exit status: 0
 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Its probably the nas that is limiting you. You are running at gigabit speeds.

 

What is the load running on the nas?

[ankitrana85]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its probably the nas that is limiting you. You are running at gigabit speeds.

 

What is the load running on the nas?

currently it is sitting at idle

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, ankitrana85 said:

currently it is sitting at idle

what load its it at when copying files? SCreenshot?

[ankitrana85]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what load its it at when copying files? SCreenshot?

umm.. not really sure how to find load per say, the only thing the readycloud shows is the temp and fan speed... i am guessing this aint what you are looking for

 

[DogKnight]

3 hours ago, ankitrana85 said:

umm.. not really sure how to find load per say, the only thing the readycloud shows is the temp and fan speed... i am guessing this aint what you are looking for

 

ReadyNAS doesn't have a built in monitor for CPU load. There is only metrics for temp's, data transfer and disk usage. There is an app available called iStat NT (located in the app repository of the ReadyNAS interface). If you install that you can monitor load via an app for iOS (was about $8 AUD). Just installed and tested and can see CPU usage details. 

This would allow you to determine if you are running into a CPU bottleneck. 

You would need to check utilization under load (e.g. when you are copying files to/from the NAS).

The readme for the iStat NT states the password for access is generated at install time and you can SSH in to check the config file. If you aren't Linux savvy, try 12345. That was what mine was. 

[ankitrana85]

3 hours ago, DogKnight said:

 

ReadyNAS doesn't have a built in monitor for CPU load. There is only metrics for temp's, data transfer and disk usage. There is an app available called iStat NT (located in the app repository of the ReadyNAS interface). If you install that you can monitor load via an app for iOS (was about $8 AUD). Just installed and tested and can see CPU usage details. 

This would allow you to determine if you are running into a CPU bottleneck. 

You would need to check utilization under load (e.g. when you are copying files to/from the NAS).

The readme for the iStat NT states the password for access is generated at install time and you can SSH in to check the config file. If you aren't Linux savvy, try 12345. That was what mine was. 

 

Thanks mate for the detailed explanation. However i highly doubt that CPU bottleneck could be the issue, refer to spec sheet. It can stream 1080p stream real time with transcoding and mentions "Maximize simultaneous throughput with up to 200MB/s read and 160MB/s write speeds"

 

Also can not ssh into the device else the warranty will be void, and it is a new unit.

 

However i will still try to follow your steps and if i am able to do it, will reply soon.

[DogKnight]

On 06/09/2018 at 9:19 PM, ankitrana85 said:

Thanks mate for the detailed explanation. However i highly doubt that CPU bottleneck could be the issue, refer to spec sheet. It can stream 1080p stream real time with transcoding and mentions "Maximize simultaneous throughput with up to 200MB/s read and 160MB/s write speeds"

 

No worries.

Bare in mind the NAS has CPU resources being used by the ReadyNAS OS and any other applications running on it. When transferring, its worth checking the following chart to see performance stats.

 

 

Also, just checked and the 214 is similar to my 314. You have two gigabit ports and the unit supports link aggregation. 

Definitely worth enabling as it will improve speeds dramatically.

Read more here: https://kb.netgear.com/23076/What-are-bonded-adapters-and-how-do-they-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-system

Saw my transfer speeds effectively double by using this. 

 

 

[AbsoluteFool]

On 6.9.2018 at 5:52 AM, ankitrana85 said:

Hi All,

 

In my home network, i have a gigabit switch (Model: TL-SG108E 3.0) plugged into the wireless router (Tp link Archer C20' lan port).   

I have my home Ubuntu server, NAS (ReadyNAS 214) and other devices plugged into the ethernet port of the switch. All these devices have gigabit NIC.

 

I assumed that any device connected on switch will be capable of gigabit speeds however when i transfer files between my NAS and my UBUNTU desktop, the speeds are not that fast.  I used RSYNC to show the speed, and i have NAS partition mounted on UBUNTU server under /media/test/T1

 

here are the transfer results:

 

Nearly right. You can only achive gigabit speed over your network if each device can deliver 1gigabit speed from the drives. If they can not this is where your bottlenec is. You're drives are not fast enough for whatever reason. Probably because of RAID other parity. Single drive? Also remember that each system takes their part of read/write on the drives.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Considering the CPU load I see on Gigabit with an i5 4690 server I would definitely be suspecting the CPU (although I would expect that CPU to have AES acceleration).

 

Still, ARM is hardly a powerhouse for this sort of thing and rsync does a lot of processing to allow incremental backups.  Plus you do not mention how large the files you are transferring are.  If its lots of relatively small files (and that can mean only a few GB) then the average speed will drop dramatically due to both the server and client latency as it stops/starts each file transfer.  Also the fragmentation of the client drive will help to bottleneck the server.

 

Also note the wording "maximum simultaneous transfer" and "up to".  In other words the total throughput when doing multiple file transfers at the same time, not a single one, and not guaranteed.  Plus its a rather misleading claim anyway if its only got Gigabit, no way it could ever reach that performance.

 

I'm sure modern NAS devices are much better than when I was looking a decade ago, but even now the CPUs are picked for cost and energy efficiency, rather than raw speed.  The specific workload makes a big difference and my own experience with rsync is its far from optimal if you are looking for raw speed.  I backup from an SSD to my servers HDD every day and its always far slower than a plain NFS copy.

[ankitrana85]

 

Firstly, thank you all for the response. i was travelling and could not get back to this post sooner. 

 

Let me reply to all the post in sequence.

 

Definitely LAG is something that i will take a look at, i think i just need to bridge both ETH0 and ETH1 connections post IP assignment. However this NAS version does not show up the graph as your does, however i am disappointed throughly on this NAS214, if it can provide write speed of at least 100MB/s that it not useable as usb 3.0.....

On 9/8/2018 at 7:44 PM, DogKnight said:

 

No worries.

Bare in mind the NAS has CPU resources being used by the ReadyNAS OS and any other applications running on it. When transferring, its worth checking the following chart to see performance stats.

 

 

Also, just checked and the 214 is similar to my 314. You have two gigabit ports and the unit supports link aggregation. 

Definitely worth enabling as it will improve speeds dramatically.

Read more here: https://kb.netgear.com/23076/What-are-bonded-adapters-and-how-do-they-work-with-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-system

Saw my transfer speeds effectively double by using this. 

[ankitrana85]

On 9/10/2018 at 8:17 AM, AbsoluteFool said:

Nearly right. You can only achive gigabit speed over your network if each device can deliver 1gigabit speed from the drives.

Ok valid point, i shall do a drive speed test to see if they can perform at a certain expected level.

Any suggestion how should i check data transfer within NAS, without moving it files to another system. Sorry bit newbie here.

 

EDIT: this NAS is configured to run as JBOD and not RAID as the speed was a concern more than safety of data

[ankitrana85]

On 9/11/2018 at 2:31 AM, Alex Atkin UK said:

Considering the CPU load I see on Gigabit with an i5 4690 server I would definitely be suspecting the CPU (although I would expect that CPU to have AES acceleration).

 

Still, ARM is hardly a powerhouse for this sort of thing and rsync does a lot of processing to allow incremental backups.  Plus you do not mention how large the files you are transferring are.  If its lots of relatively small files (and that can mean only a few GB) then the average speed will drop dramatically due to both the server and client latency as it stops/starts each file transfer.  Also the fragmentation of the client drive will help to bottleneck the server.

 

Also note the wording "maximum simultaneous transfer" and "up to".  In other words the total throughput when doing multiple file transfers at the same time, not a single one, and not guaranteed.  Plus its a rather misleading claim anyway if its only got Gigabit, no way it could ever reach that performance.

 

I'm sure modern NAS devices are much better than when I was looking a decade ago, but even now the CPUs are picked for cost and energy efficiency, rather than raw speed.  The specific workload makes a big difference and my own experience with rsync is its far from optimal if you are looking for raw speed.  I backup from an SSD to my servers HDD every day and its always far slower than a plain NFS copy.

my laptop (Ubuntu server) is of following config:

ACER ASPIRE 5740 G laptop: (external link)

1. Intel Core i5-430M 2.26 GHz @ 2.53 GHz
2. 4 GB Ram DDR3 (i think 533MHZ)

i see where you are going with CPU bottlenecking however any CPU with more than 1 GHZ speed should be capable of handling gigbits speed. We are talking approx 100MB/s speed for network transfer. 

 

it looks the buck stops at the NAS214. i will get another laptop with gigabit card to do some testing and will report further.

 

Thanks all

[beersykins]

You can write to /dev/null to take out drive or CPU/RAID-parity related bottlenecks from your test.