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Gigabit Ethernet Transfer Speeds

I

iczster

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 23, 2014
95
4
Hi,

If anyone could help me out that would be great.

Basically I have a network shared SMB server (NAS), via gigabit LAN. I have recently moved from a windows machine to a retina iMac and the exact same cable plugged into the NAS got me full gigabit speeds. For some reason on OSX I get half of what it should be. I've tried changing MTUs and other things but not joy.

So the EXACT same configuration on the RiMac halves my transfer speed to the NAS? Any ideas please on what this could be.

Thanks.
 
If the "Hardware" tab in your network settings for your Ethernet shows Gigabit, you have negotiated the link speed correctly.

Everything else is software. My guess is your windows machines handles Mac's differently than your NAS. You did not tell your NAS brand name, nor the software.

But even without that I can tell you that the link speed doesn't tell you how good or bad the transfer will be.

I get 80MB/s over Gigabit with a QNAP NAS using AFP, not SMB protocol.

If your NAS has a web service, you can probably test the raw link speed by transferring a big file with HTTP from the Terminal.

Long story short, I'm quite sure it's not a network issue but a software quality issue.

You also need RAM for buffering, if you have a small NAS with little RAM and small CPU, I/O and network will saturate the internal busses.
 
pmau said:
If the "Hardware" tab in your network settings for your Ethernet shows Gigabit, you have negotiated the link speed correctly.

Everything else is software. My guess is your windows machines handles Mac's differently than your NAS. You did not tell your NAS brand name, nor the software.

But even without that I can tell you that the link speed doesn't tell you how good or bad the transfer will be.

I get 80MB/s over Gigabit with a QNAP NAS using AFP, not SMB protocol.

If your NAS has a web service, you can probably test the raw link speed by transferring a big file with HTTP from the Terminal.

Long story short, I'm quite sure it's not a network issue but a software quality issue.

You also need RAM for buffering, if you have a small NAS with little RAM and small CPU, I/O and network will saturate the internal busses.
Click to expand...
He is not complaing about the speed on the NAS and hence the issue of Ram and CPU is not relevant. He is complaining about the Apple computer not handing the gigabit link efficiently. I am interested in this thread because I am expecting to implement gigabit in the next couple of months my network has both Mac computers and a Synology NAS.
 
My NAS is a Thecus N7700. I was wondering if it has something to do with the SMB stack and how I have my remote shares mounted?

The link speed is showing correctly both in the network config and via ifconfig command line and full duplex. Transfer via rsync shows a slowdown by 50% compared to the windows desktop I ripped the cable out of less than an hour ago :)

Would appreciate some help to try things to improve transfer speeds mate.
 
SMB is bad on the Mac, I don't argue about that.

If you ran your rsync locally, using a mounted SMB share, I would not expect any difference.

If you rsync from your Mac to your NAS directly, I would expect wire speeds.
Other than that, I would not rely on SMB for Mac clients.

I know AFP is a pain and doesn't work, but SMB on the Mac is a really bad implementation.
 
pmau said:
SMB is bad on the Mac, I don't argue about that.

If you ran your rsync locally, using a mounted SMB share, I would not expect any difference.

If you rsync from your Mac to your NAS directly, I would expect wire speeds.
Other than that, I would not rely on SMB for Mac clients.

I know AFP is a pain and doesn't work, but SMB on the Mac is a really bad implementation.
Click to expand...

What tests would you suggest I try? I tried mounting volumes with cifs://IP Address but its exactly the same transfer speed. The cable is cat5e which should be fine for gigabit and worked dandy on the windows machine. I could plug a windows laptop in now and Im sure I'd get gigabit speeds but the RiMac just isn't playing.

Any ideas mate and what do you mean rsync directly to the NAS?
 
Have you tried updating your NAS to a newer firmware version? There are some that have older SMB implementations that will cause these slower speeds on non-Windows machines.
 
dyn said:
Have you tried updating your NAS to a newer firmware version? There are some that have older SMB implementations that will cause these slower speeds on non-Windows machines.
Click to expand...

Great call mate I'll give that a go tomorrow.
 
I think this might be the issue. My Mac (10.10.1 now as well as all previous OS X back to 10.7.x) gets in the range of 105MB/S on transfers to my Synology - large files obviously. I don't really think you can expect more that over gigabit given the tcp/ip overhead.



dyn said:
Have you tried updating your NAS to a newer firmware version? There are some that have older SMB implementations that will cause these slower speeds on non-Windows machines.
Click to expand...
 
jji7skyline said:
Maybe your HDD read/write speeds are the limiting factor?
Click to expand...

Nope got gigabit performance on NAS from previous windows machine (that had internal SSD like my RiMac) and also using the exact same cabling.

Going to try NAS f/w upgrade later.
 
bah it didnt work :( The firmware on my NAS was version 3.0 so updated to version 5.0.3

I thought I was on to a winner but when I tried a file transfer its exactly the same.

Any ideas on what else to try?
 
I get 112 to 115 MB/s transfers from a Win 8 VM on Fusion running on my 5k iMac, up to a Synology NAS. Jumbo disabled in the VM (I've found some pretty bad instability in VMWare Fusion with Jumbo frames in the clients). That's some 5-10GB files transferring with minor other activity on the machine.
 
bjmoose said:
I get 112 to 115 MB/s transfers from a Win 8 VM on Fusion running on my 5k iMac, up to a Synology NAS. Jumbo disabled in the VM (I've found some pretty bad instability in VMWare Fusion with Jumbo frames in the clients). That's some 5-10GB files transferring with minor other activity on the machine.
Click to expand...
I'd be happy with that and its what I had less than a week ago under Windows. Now getting 48-50 over the same connection, same NAS, only thing different is the OS. I really dont want to install Fusion just for copying files.

Is there a way to completely bypass the smb stack on OSX to try a raw copy and test transfer speeds?
 
pmau said:
SMB is bad on the Mac, I don't argue about that.

If you ran your rsync locally, using a mounted SMB share, I would not expect any difference.

If you rsync from your Mac to your NAS directly, I would expect wire speeds.
Other than that, I would not rely on SMB for Mac clients.

I know AFP is a pain and doesn't work, but SMB on the Mac is a really bad implementation.
Click to expand...

Bit of an update it does look like the SMB stack. Ive installed SSH and FTP modules on the NAS and get 100MBs when transferring.

I have a workaround at the moment but would love to get native SMB working, any ideas anyone please?
 
iczster said:
Is there a way to completely bypass the smb stack on OSX to try a raw copy and test transfer speeds?
Click to expand...

I'd suggest iperf as a raw how's-the-network-working tool. See Wikipedia page to run it. Don't expect to get the same value as a good file transfer gives, as the transfers get into TCP frame sliding and other speed improvements.

----------

Here's a page about iPerf on Thecus NAS boxen from the forums
 
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