Need help upgrading to 2.5 GBE

[Natra]

This networking is so complicated I cannot get my head around it, it is not plug-and-play. The reason that I want to upgrade to 2.5 it is only four when I play 4K videos at day time when all the kids are at home and the wife and everybody is using the Internet like crazy then the 4K movie buffers and I’m talking about now 100GB file is sometimes buffering, but when I use it at night when everybody is asleep, then there are no hiccups so if you guys would look at the picture that I’ve posted if I were to take that route, would this work for link aggregation.

 

[Rusty]

Well, the size of the file is not big of an issue here as much as the bitrate. Are we talking about streaming from the Internet via the router or inside LAN?

So what’s the exact situation that you are getting into? According to the picture all clients are wired so there shouldn’t be an issues on that front. So again, the video content is coming from the outside or inside LAN?

 

[Natra]

Well, the size of the file is not big of an issue here as much as the bitrate. Are we talking about streaming from the Internet via the router or inside LAN?

So what’s the exact situation that you are getting into? According to the picture all clients are wired so there shouldn’t be an issues on that front. So again, the video content is coming from the outside or inside LAN?

The file is stored on the Synology so it's coming from the LAN inside.

 

[Rusty]

The file is stored on the Synology so it's coming from the LAN inside.

So can you measure the network utilization when that file is streaming? How much from that 1G connection are you utilizing on average?

 

[Natra]

I don't know I have everything disconnected right now. The thing that I do know is at night I have no problem so everybody's asleep. I am the only one using the network. It's only on daytime when everybody's using the Internet, so maybe the network gets overloaded. So what do I need to do? Is it a new switch or do I need to connect everything differently?

 

[Rusty]

Well you haven’t said a lot and yet we have a lot of posts here already.

Let’s start with hardware 1st. What’s the switch model? Cable category? Any power line adapters in this network setup?

Also, I’m just guessing here but some of the clients in the network are wifi devices? Are those having issues? Is the Asus device the only wifi point?

 

[Natra]

I have a Netgear 1gbe switch cat 6 cables and no the other devices are not having problems because they're taking traffic from the Internet not from the server, yes Asus is the only wifi point.

-- post merged: 14. Aug 2023 --

This guy recommends link aggregation

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ2aK7yqjUg
Go forward to 07:50 min

 

[Rusty]

This guy recommends link aggregation

There is nothing against LAG, but just to be clear it will not help in a single client communication towards your NAS as stated in the previous posts. LAG will be beneficial with multiple concurrent connections towards it by providing each client with its own single 1G lane. Expecting 2G communication towards a single client will not happen as the speed test in the video shows. Not a single was there over 1G speed even in an aggregated configuration.

Would LAG help your? Maybe it will but only if you have multiple simultaneous traffic towards the NAS. Any other case, 1G it is.

 

[Natra]

There is nothing against LAG, but just to be clear it will not help in a single client communication towards your NAS as stated in the previous posts. LAG will be beneficial with multiple concurrent connections towards it by providing each client with its own single 1G lane. Expecting 2G communication towards a single client will not happen as the speed test in the video shows. Not a single was there over 1G speed even in an aggregated configuration.

Would LAG help your? Maybe it will but only if you have multiple simultaneous traffic towards the NAS. Any other case, 1G it is.

What do I need to do then to make this work or buy?

 

[itsjasper]

Personally I'd connect the NAS to the switch, not the router. The switch will almost certainly have a better switching throughput than the router itself. Another benefit is the NAS will still be reachable from other wired clients if the router is down (eg during a reboot).

I appreciate you are looking towards 2.5GbE, but the reality is the setup you have should be working fine with gigabit anyway. I suspect there are issues elsewhere in your setup. Ignore Link Aggregation and SMB Multichannel for now, and make sure everything is working and getting gigabit speeds first.

For the 2.5GbE upgrade, a QNAP TSW-1108-8T would be a good, cheap drop-in replacement for the Netgear switch. Grab a CableCreation USB to 2.5GBE NIC for the NAS, and use the bb-qq/r8152 package to enable 2.5GbE on the DS920+ (I have a DS720+ running the same setup for 2.5GbE and it has been rock solid).

Also look at enabling QoS on the router. I have a feeling that this will make the greatest improvement.

 

[Rusty]

What do I need to do then to make this work or buy?

Link Aggregation | DSM - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

In terms of buying, you will need a LAG supported switch (802.3ad) if you want that kind of bond, but it can work on a generic non-manageable switch as well. In that case you just have to stay clear of the 802.3 options so have a read in the URL above as it provides a detailed description of each option.

 

[Natra]

Personally I'd connect the NAS to the switch, not the router. The switch will almost certainly have a better switching throughput than the router itself. Another benefit is the NAS will still be reachable from other wired clients if the router is down (eg during a reboot).

I appreciate you are looking towards 2.5GbE, but the reality is the setup you have should be working fine with gigabit anyway. I suspect there are issues elsewhere in your setup. Ignore Link Aggregation and SMB Multichannel for now, and make sure everything is working and getting gigabit speeds first.

For the 2.5GbE upgrade, a QNAP TSW-1108-8T would be a good, cheap drop-in replacement for the Netgear switch. Grab a CableCreation USB to 2.5GBE NIC for the NAS, and use the bb-qq/r8152 package to enable 2.5GbE on the DS920+ (I have a DS720+ running the same setup for 2.5GbE and it has been rock solid).

Also look at enabling QoS on the router.

With the set up, will I also be able to get Internet to the Nas and is there in the tutorial how to set this up on a Mac? I've seen the YouTube video that shows for windows, but not Mac. Qos should priority number one be file transfer.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJ-Lhyq16s

 

[Natra]

With the set up, will I also be able to get Internet to the Nas and is there in the tutorial how to set this up on a Mac? I've seen the YouTube video that shows for windows, but not Mac. Qos should priority number one be file transfer.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJ-Lhyq16s

???

 

[itsjasper]

With the set up, will I also be able to get Internet to the NAS

Yes, as the switch has a wired connection to the router.

Qos should priority number one be file transfer.

That is a question only you can answer - try different settings and see what works best for you.

 

[Coop777]

Put simply, for anything above 1GBE connectivity you will need:
2.5 GBE network adapters for NAS and wired endpoints
a switch that supports multi gig speeds
A minimum of cat 6a cabling

IMO..if you are going to upgrade wired connectivity, why not consider 10 GBE?

 

[Natra]

Put simply, for anything above 1GBE connectivity you will need:
2.5 GBE network adapters for NAS and wired endpoints
a switch that supports multi gig speeds
A minimum of cat 6a cabling

IMO..if you are going to upgrade wired connectivity, why not consider 10 GBE?

You’re 100% right the one thing I do know is that I need to move to 10gbe the cabling is already cat6 so I don’t need to worry about that. I am looking to buy maybe QNAP or Windows PC don’t really know I wish that I could buy a Synology but they are so under powered and I use Plex, so I need integrated graphics in the processor.

 

[Coop777]

note there is a difference between cat 6 and cat6a, 6a is required for faster transfer speeds above 1GBE.

 

[Natra]

The length that I’m using right now I think it’s maximum 20 m so shouldn’t be a problem.

 

[Natra]

I just wanted to do an update I bought a new eight port switch TP Link it was only $25. My old one was Netgear five port switch. The testing that I have done I think the switch was the problem but maybe in the future I will probably upgrade to 10gbe though that is not necessary for the problem that I have been having. I tried it with a 60 GB file transfer from my nas to my computer, an 82 GB movie playing with Nvidia shield 2 8K YouTube videos streaming my son playing his game and one 4K movie playing in my phone with Plex and transcoding to 1080P all of this at the same time and it was no problem. I just wanted to make this update if maybe somebody else has the same problem maybe they should try to buy first and you switch with more ports.

 

[fredbert]

So that sounds like the old switch’s backplane was getting overloaded. If you got a TP-Link 8 x 1GbE switch for $25 then that was probably the unmanaged 1008, or similar, and I think they have 16 Gbps backplane.

Coming new to this thread and looking at what’s been said, thinking about how I’ve played with my LAN topology, I would say that the approach of using LAG (the adaptive load balance or equivalent one when vSwitch is enabled) would give the simplest setup. Do this on the NAS and attach its two LAN ports and all other wired devices to a big enough switch. Then a single 1 GbE to the router.

The adaptive load balance is available on the DS920+ (as it is on my DS1520+) and while not as granular for sharing the two lines, you have six devices and the more devices the more even the sharing and more like to dynamic LAG versions.

I see the router probably supports LAG on its LAN ports.

[Wireless Router] How to setup link aggregation on ASUS router?(Teaming Port/LACP) | Official Support | ASUS USA

But note that the types of LAG it supports will required a more expensive managed switch. That means in the original post the diagram had a switch LAG’ed to the router, but you had an unmanaged switch… so this would not work. Even though the NAS doing LAG to the router would work.

If you got a managed switch supporting the right LACP LAG for the router then you could have more total bandwidth for your AX wireless client to access the NAS. Some switches allow you to set the criteria for sharing LAG capacity: probably use source IP + destination IP.


Since SMB multi-channel doesn’t work when you’re already using LAG then you have to choose which is more important: SMB file sharing or supporting multiple devices with other services. It sounds like LAG is more helpful in your situation. Plus SMB MC with Mac is somewhat problematic…

My setup with DS1520+ which has four 1GbE LAN ports is to LAG three of them and leave the fourth standalone. My Mac Mini has a 10GbE port (planning for future use) and a thunderbolt adapter with 1GbE. I do get SMB MC working but it fluctuates between 130 and 180 MBps (if memory serves). The NAS uses the LAG Bond1 as the main interface and this is what all other clients use to access it. I do note from reading others experiences with Mac and SMB MC then mine working, such as it is, might be not be the same as other people.

The future would be to upgrade to 10 GbE devices so that there’s no more messing with LAG etc. But that requires quite a bit of negotiating


Without LAG, the NAS will can have two IPs on the LAN… just directly access the NAS on LAN1 IP for some services and LAN2 IP for others.