Backing up to NAS over wireless network

[Tooster]

Hi,

(I'm new here)
I'm having a slight issue with backing up to my NAS ( Lacie Classic HD ) over my wireless network at home. I bought a copy of Chronosync configured it to my wishes (only copy from source to destenation) and syncing works etcetera but it is CRAZY slow, it peaks at 980 kb/s and averages 854. My macbook pro is formatted Mac journaled, my NAS is NTFS it is connected to wifi via a usb adapter ( D-Link DWA-140 (brand new)) my router is a linksys, one of those flat ones (quite new aswell) and macbook just uses airport to connect. i can copy to the NAS via smb if i'm not mistaken.
How can i speed this up?
what is making it go so slow?
my internet connection is 3,5 mb/s so it's not the router i think. i've uploaded to servers at over 11 mb/s (not at home) so i don't think it's the macbook.
is it because of the different formats?
and how fast should / could this be going?

Thnx for the help.
looking forward to coming here more often and helping other people out as well

 

[celticpride678]

You've got to keep in mind that you're transferring large files over a wireless connection. It's not going to be as fast as a direct cable transfer.

Hard drive speed, network traffic, quality of the NAS, how far away are you from the router, etc. can all affect the transfer speeds of files over the network.

There is really nothing you can do (software wise) to try and speed things up.

 

[Tooster]

You've got to keep in mind that you're transferring large files over a wireless connection. It's not going to be as fast as a direct cable transfer.

Hard drive speed, network traffic, quality of the NAS, how far away are you from the router, etc. can all affect the transfer speeds of files over the network.

There is really nothing you can do (software wise) to try and speed things up.

i get that ... but isn't 900 kb/s slow even for wireless?
hard drives are way faster then 900 kb/s, it's LAN and the other 2 pc's are just browsing the web, i have 3,5 mb/s from where the NAS and my MBP are located ...

i was just thinking it's this slow because of the Mac journaled to NTFS thing, that it has to convert every file before copying it. could it be that it's the Lacie Classic HD that is slowing all this down? would formatting it to Mac journaled help?

 

[balamw]

i was just thinking it's this slow because of the Mac journaled to NTFS thing, that it has to convert every file before copying it.

There isn't any conversion going on. I assume you are using the NAS as a SMB/CIFS/Windows share so the NAS doesn't know that it is talking to a Mac. (And the overhead on the Mac is very low).

Can you benchmark transfers in finder. Copy a large file to the NAS and then back. Connect to the wired network and repeat.

<1 MBps does seem low, I was having trouble with my NAS and seeing 2 MBps which I isolated down to something wrong with one of the hard drives in the machine. Still haven't fixed it though.

B

 

[Tooster]

Can you benchmark transfers in finder. Copy a large file to the NAS and then back. Connect to the wired network and repeat.

B

I made a 100 Mb file (using dd in terminal)

6,4 s from NAS to Windows PC via USB
6,5 s other way around

16,4 s from MBP to NAS both wire
15,8 s from NAS to MBP both wire

33,4 s from MBP(wireless) to NAS(wire)
40,7 s from NAS(wire) to MBP(wireless)

55,2 s from MBP to NAS both wireless
1:05,4 from NAS to MBP both wireless

2:09,4 s from NAS to MBP on location (the other times are next to the router)
2:27,9 s from MBP to NAS on location

 

[balamw]

I made a 100 Mb file (using dd in terminal)

I do think part of the problem is that you already have a degraded wireless link and when you have both the MBP and the NAS on the wireless you have to divide your available bandwidth between them. (even if you did have a full 3.5 Mbps each device would only have < 2Mbps which is SLOW). This seems to be borne out by the wire-wire wire-wireless and wireless-wireless tests you did within good range.

I'd suggest trying to improve your link as much as possible run wire where possible and/or relocate/extend your router or get a booster antenna for it.

EDIT: Does this degrade your internet performance? How fast is your internet connection? Is something like speedtest.net affected if you are next to the router vs. on location?

B

 

[Tooster]

so looks like i just reached the limits of my router then.
ok, i can live with that. i found that it's much faster to momentarely setup my MBP like a router and connect the drive that way. gives me a good 3,7 mb/s. i'm now going to try to setup remote access to the NAS. but i'll make a new topic for that one

thank you very much for your fast replies and helping hands!

 

[occamsrazor]

If you have "verify copies" checked in the Chronosync options, it will read back and compare to the original all data copied. Which is very good if you absolutely need to ensure data integrity, e.g. an image archive. But because you are reading and writing simultaneously across the same wireless channel, it will effectively half your throughput.