Can I speed up my "network attached drive" (via ethernet and an old MBP)?

[timvansomeren]

Hi!

So - is there a way to get gigabit ethernet speeds (I assume 1,000MB/s) on a RAID I have on my network via an old MacBook Pro acting as a server?

Set up is:

- Pegasus TB2 RAID, connected via Thunderbolt2 to a MacBook Pro Early2013.
- Cat 7 Ethernet cable (via Thunderbold 2 adaptor) from MBPro to a CalDigit Thunderbolt3 hub.
- Caldigit hub connected via TB3 to my MacBook Air 2021 M1.

So new MacBook Air finds and connects to the RAID attached to the MacBook Pro totally flawlessly, it works great and I can read and write and do all I want.

Old MacBookPro is totally standard, running Catalina (too old for Big Sur) and has filesharing on, obviously.

BUT the read write speeds (according to Blackmagic Speed Test) are a bit slow. I get average of around 110MB/s from the M1 reading and writing to the RAID over the Ethernet network.

I went to Network prefs on both machines and set the Ethernet Hardware to manual and the maximum speed offered (1000baseT) and the highest MTU (Jumbo (9000)), but its' still limited to 110 MB/sec.

Is the CalDigit dock a bottleneck?
Is there a better hardware interface that could help? Maybe a card I could install in the MacBook Pro 2013?

Or is this the best I can expect from a drive connected to a Mac sharing over Ethernet?

Any tips or advice would be great!

Thanks!


t

 

[velocityg4]

You’re getting 110 MBps which is about 880 Mbps. While gigabit is theoretically 1000 Mbps. Practical limits are lower. You’re getting about the best you can realistically hope for. With enough tweaking you might hit 118 MBps but it could just be latency from your router/switch or elsewhere. Eating up that extra 8MBps.

If you want faster. You’ll need to step up to 10 Gig E.