Very slow read/write speed ( NAS DS218+)

[SysEng]

Hello, Synology Experts,

I am experiencing slow copying process between Synology and other external hard drives attached directly to Synology through USB port. Below are some screenshots of the performance.

 

[Rusty]

Looks like the read speeds on the nas side are decent, but also just guessing here, this is a transfer with multiple smaller files?

What happens if you try and transfer a single large file?
Are you using File Station to copy the data or some other method?
What model is the USB disk?

 

[SysEng]

Looks like the read speeds on the nas side are decent, but also just guessing here, this is a transfer with multiple smaller files?

What happens if you try and transfer a single large file?
Are you using File Station to copy the data or some other method?
What model is the USB disk?

Hello, Rusty,

I tested the download/upload speed of one large file (1GB) from/to Synology and here's the results:

The upload/download/ copy was done using file station.

Do these numbers look reasonable?

Thank you!

 

[Rusty]

Slow speeds I have to say (about half or less than half of what they should be), but there are a lot of devices in some cases. Also, how is your Macbook connected to your network? Is this wifi or ethernet?

 

[SysEng]

Slow speeds I have to say (about half or less than half of what they should be), but there are a lot of devices in some cases. Also, how is your Macbook connected to your network? Is this wifi or ethernet?

Hello, Rusty,

The MacBook is connected to the network via WiFi.

 

[Rusty]

Hello, Rusty,

The MacBook is connected to the network via WiFi.

Well, that's a whole different game then. That might very well be your choke point. It will depend on how well your wifi is working, what kind of wifi standard it is etc. So, if you have the option to connect your NAS and mac both via ethernet, that would give you much faster speeds for sure.

Is your wifi AC standard? What router/wifi AP are we talking about here?

 

[SysEng]

Well, that's a whole different game then. That might very well be your choke point. It will depend on how well your wifi is working, what kind of wifi standard it is etc. So, if you have the option to connect your NAS and mac both via ethernet, that would give you much faster speeds for sure.

Is your wifi AC standard? What router/wifi AP are we talking about here?

Hello, Rusty,

I enabled DHCP on my NAS and connected and connected the NAS directly to the MacBook via an ethernet cable.

I tested the download/upload speed. Surprisingly the speed went down. Here's the results.

When I checked the network interface on NAS, this is what I found.

What do you think?

 

[Rusty]

Hello, Rusty,

I enabled DHCP on my NAS and connected and connected the NAS directly to the MacBook via an ethernet cable.

I tested the download/upload speed. Surprisingly the speed went down. Here's the results.

View attachment 3641

When I checked the network interface on NAS, this is what I found.

View attachment 3640


What do you think?

Guess that explains the speed then. 10MB/s max transfer.

Either the cable is busted or your macbook is the problem. What model is that?

 

[SysEng]

Guess that explains the speed then. 10MB/s max transfer.

Either the cable is busted or your macbook is the problem. What model is that?

It's MacBook Pro 2019 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 | 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

 

[Rusty]

Ok so the mac is not the problem, but if you can see your NAS is registering a 100Mbit connection. That will not push more then 10MB/s. Replace the cable on the nas, check the port on the other end (switch/router) and see when the status of DSM lan will jump to 1000Mbit connection, then do your tests again.

 

[SysEng]

Ok so the mac is not the problem, but if you can see your NAS is registering a 100Mbit connection. That will not push more then 10MB/s. Replace the cable on the nas, check the port on the other end (switch/router) and see when the status of DSM lan will jump to 1000Mbit connection, then do your tests again.

Hello, Rusty,

One more thing I observed is that when I disabled the DHCP and connected the Synology to the MacBook via Wifi, the network status shows 1000 Mbps (it should give 125 MB//s) but I don't get any thing near even 60 MB/s transfer rate.

 

[Rusty]

connected the Synology to the MacBook via Wifi

How exactly?

 

[Coop777]

Hello, Rusty,

One more thing I observed is that when I disabled the DHCP and connected the Synology to the MacBook via Wifi, the network status shows 1000 Mbps (it should give 125 MB//s) but I don't get any thing near even 60 MB/s transfer rate.

View attachment 3667

The Network status you see if the NAS connectivity to your WIRED network. You've indicated several times that your Macbook is connected WIRELESSLY, which looks to be your bottleneck (as Rusty has tried to clarify). Have you tried connecting the Macbook to your router and disabled Wireless to retest transfer speeds?

 

[SysEng]

How exactly?

I am sorry, Rusty. I misspoke. I meant that the MacBook is connected wirelessly to the network not to Synology itself.

 

[Rusty]

I am sorry, Rusty. I misspoke. I meant that the MacBook is connected wirelessly to the network not to Synology itself.

Well then that might be a problem there depending on your wifi speed

 

[SysEng]

The Network status you see if the NAS connectivity to your WIRED network. You've indicated several times that your Macbook is connected WIRELESSLY, which looks to be your bottleneck (as Rusty has tried to clarify). Have you tried connecting the Macbook to your router and disabled Wireless to retest transfer speeds?

Hello Coop777,

Thank you so much for the advice. I ran 3 experiments to upload 1 GB file via ethernet and Wifi using MacBook and Windows as below:

I did not run the same experiment on MacBook using ethernet because I realized that the USB C to ethernet adapter that I have is unreliable and it doesn't transfer more than 11 MB/s.

 

[CoffeeBlack]

Basically...laptop disk* drives are capable of 125/MBytes (1000/mbits) per second for large file transfers (some a little more some a little less). Laptop SSDs are capable of up to about 8000/MBytes now (a little better then that but its a pretty niche market for those pcie4 nvme drives)...Wireless AC at its best can push just over 1000/mbits real world (more likely you'd be lucky to get 1/4 of that). Synology's nic's i think top out around max 40/gbit (most max are 1gb/1000mbit occasionally 10gbit). Mid tier to High end enterprise level disk setups like nutanix, netapp etc, will often have 10gbit or 40gbit or even 100gb nics or fiber connections (fiber = lower latency at the same speeds) etc (some ultra high end are higher still)...

In looking at that a little closer...8000 Megabytes...is about 64000 megabits. 40gbits is 40000 megabits. The Apple 2019's came with ssd's...And i'm going out on a limb here, but i'm going to guess its a pcie3 nvme drive...So probably around 3000MB/s (24000mbits) internally peaking thereabouts (this can range all over depending on load). If you had the best wireless router money could buy...you'd get maybe 125MB/s (1000mbit) [note i have a 2500mbit router connection from my pc to my router, and can't quite hit 1000mbit over wireless to the shared drive which is a 1TB pcie gen 3 nvme drive].

Point is...the limit is (almost) always the network. Also, wireless is much more finicky then wired. And...As others have mentioned, small files also slow things down if being sent 1 file at a time, as the disk spends a lot of time verifying and finalizing the file, and more often (causing basically pausing/latency during the transfer of several small files etc...its also often a more realistic load). If you used something that can make use of multiple threads (like robocopy if used/tested out properly), you can, sometimes, make better use of your network/disk setup. Adding in USB (3?) on your NAS, often the USB 3.x controllers on NAS's aren't always the top of the line, or* the CPU in your NAS isn't capable of sending as fast over the USB 3.x controller (as USB uses more CPU overhead then SATA and quickly reaches its limits).

I would start at the network...first, check to make sure you're connecting at 5ghz rather then the 2.4 ghz range, if you have neighbors, or if you live in an apartment, every single house/flat etc has at least 2 wireless 2.4 connections going on, and usually there's 8+. Multiply that times all of your neighbors, and suddenly your 2.4ghz connection gives you realistically about 15mbit (and may drop entirely for periods...while some joker is sending test data across wireless to his NAS...heh). If you can get a wired connection at gigabit+ speeds, that is 100% of the time, better over time, then any wireless connection you can currently get in a home (anybody who tells you differently is selling something or doesn't understand how it works...or both...for internal networks).

Edit: First sorry for the book...apparently i got bored...99% of that is probably useless to you...Second, i said 100% of the time...therefore i have to be wrong...If you can get a wired connection at gigabit+ speeds, that is 100% of the time, better over time, then any wireless connection [**unless you're using usb ethernet, which can present all sorts of different types of results dependent on chip, driver and cpu usage**]

 

[SysEng]

Basically...laptop disk* drives are capable of 125/MBytes (1000/mbits) per second for large file transfers (some a little more some a little less). Laptop SSDs are capable of up to about 8000/MBytes now (a little better then that but its a pretty niche market for those pcie4 nvme drives)...Wireless AC at its best can push just over 1000/mbits real world (more likely you'd be lucky to get 1/4 of that). Synology's nic's i think top out around max 40/gbit (most max are 1gb/1000mbit occasionally 10gbit). Mid tier to High end enterprise level disk setups like nutanix, netapp etc, will often have 10gbit or 40gbit or even 100gb nics or fiber connections (fiber = lower latency at the same speeds) etc (some ultra high end are higher still)...

In looking at that a little closer...8000 Megabytes...is about 64000 megabits. 40gbits is 40000 megabits. The Apple 2019's came with ssd's...And i'm going out on a limb here, but i'm going to guess its a pcie3 nvme drive...So probably around 3000MB/s (24000mbits) internally peaking thereabouts (this can range all over depending on load). If you had the best wireless router money could buy...you'd get maybe 125MB/s (1000mbit) [note i have a 2500mbit router connection from my pc to my router, and can't quite hit 1000mbit over wireless to the shared drive which is a 1TB pcie gen 3 nvme drive].

Point is...the limit is (almost) always the network. Also, wireless is much more finicky then wired. And...As others have mentioned, small files also slow things down if being sent 1 file at a time, as the disk spends a lot of time verifying and finalizing the file, and more often (causing basically pausing/latency during the transfer of several small files etc...its also often a more realistic load). If you used something that can make use of multiple threads (like robocopy if used/tested out properly), you can, sometimes, make better use of your network/disk setup. Adding in USB (3?) on your NAS, often the USB 3.x controllers on NAS's aren't always the top of the line, or* the CPU in your NAS isn't capable of sending as fast over the USB 3.x controller (as USB uses more CPU overhead then SATA and quickly reaches its limits).

I would start at the network...first, check to make sure you're connecting at 5ghz rather then the 2.4 ghz range, if you have neighbors, or if you live in an apartment, every single house/flat etc has at least 2 wireless 2.4 connections going on, and usually there's 8+. Multiply that times all of your neighbors, and suddenly your 2.4ghz connection gives you realistically about 15mbit (and may drop entirely for periods...while some joker is sending test data across wireless to his NAS...heh). If you can get a wired connection at gigabit+ speeds, that is 100% of the time, better over time, then any wireless connection you can currently get in a home (anybody who tells you differently is selling something or doesn't understand how it works...or both...for internal networks).

Hello, CoffeeBlack,

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such detailed explanation. I really appreciate it.

Can we conclude that given that my MacBook needs to be connected to the network via Wifi (it's more convenient) and that I am connecting at 5ghz and that nothing wrong with the Synology and MacBook configuration, I should accept the 55 MB/s write speed.

One more piece of information that might be helpful. I have cascading routers configuration in my house as below:

Modem > Main Router (Gryphon Mesh WiFi Security Router) > Secondary Router (Linksys WRT 3200 ACM)

The NAS is connected to the Secondary Router (Linksys WRT 3200 ACM).

 

[Coop777]

Why are 2 routers needed? And the last question - what protocol are you using to access the NAS from the Macbook? SMB? AFP?

 

[SysEng]

Why are 2 routers needed? And the last question - what protocol are you using to access the NAS from the Macbook? SMB? AFP?

I need to routers to have 2 separate networks at home. One for family/personal and one for business.

I am currently using AFP to access the NAS from the Macbook?

Note: all file transfer experiments were done in NAS File Station (not using Mac Finder)