Purchased QNAP 469P need assistance upgrading n/w components

[aahonari]

Hi everyone,

I've recently purchased a QNAP 469-Pro which as you know supports link aggregation ( port trunking / IEEE 802.3ad). Currently I have a Linksys WRT610N wireless router and a TP-Link 8 port gigabit switch that does NOT support link aggregation. Now, I would very much appreciate it, if you helped me by teaching me how to best upgrade my network components so as to fully utilize the performance (or come close as much as possible to the advertised performance) of 221.8 MB/sec Reading, 220.8 MB/sec Writing mentioned on QNAP's website.

I have all of my files (movies, music, personal data files, etc) stored on the NAS. I get roughly an abysmal ~30Mbs right now (wireless) on 5GHz. My household uses the NAS constantly to stream from and download to the NAS. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance....

P.S.. There are two MB Pros (2010 Core i7, 8GB ram) and two iPad 2s that are most of the time connected to the networking either watching something or browsing the web.

[schumaku]

For full performing port trunking, you need a managed switch - and probably also GbE trunking to your workstations.

I get roughly an abysmal ~30Mbs right now (wireless).

Well - either enjoy the comfort of a wireless connection _or_ performance. Start with wired Gigaabit Ethernet...

[aahonari]

I need a switch that supports 802.3ad to begin with. From there -- as I appreciate your point about compromising performance for comfort -- I think there are more advanced wireless routers that can perform better than 30mbs, no? I was looking into Linksys SLM2008T switch, which supports 802.3ad. Any thoughts? From there I am not sure what I should do with the wireless router.. Any suggestions? As you might have surmised by now, I am not too familiar with network setups etc, hence being here asking for help..

[Don]

Link aggregation is not going to do anything to improve your wireless throughput. Even with a N router it still won't help. If you want better performance go wired.

[schumaku]

WIreless does _never_ perform - mainstream 300 Mbit/s technology does barely reach Fast Ethernet performance. 10..20 times slower than Ggigabit Ethernet in reality.

As you are talking of MB Pro - nice design, and a single GbE interface each. Start working with a wired Gigabit Ethernet, and your existing switch. Once this is settled, you can start experimenting with trunking. Port trunking can bring some advantage in case both machines are concurrently challenging the NAS only.

[P3R]

...I think there are more advanced wireless routers that can perform better than 30mbs, no?

The WRT-610N does supports the highest performing WiFi-standard (802.11n) so the bottlenecks that you see is in your environment (thick walls or busy RF) or in the clients being too slow (bad antennas or other hardware limitations).

A new switch and port trunking the Qnap is a total waste of money and effort unless you start connecting clients by network cables.

[aahonari]

So, is my understanding from your suggestions correct that a N wireless router will not deliver even 200mbps actual throughput when some are being advertised to perfom at 300/450 + 450 (i.e. Linksys e4200 or ea4500) ? Or is it just my network facing bottleneck issues? Btw, I pinged my router from my laptop on the 5Ghz freq. and received varying results from under a ms to 2.7ms!! I understand that ultimately for best performance I have to resort to wired access. However this will be highly impractical for all other machines at my place.

Btw, thanks for your replies...

[schumaku]

Well, some evolving standards might supply some more thoughput - still ways off from a wired network. and then you need 450 Mbit WLAN interfaces for your OS X systems then first, to get the 50% advantage, too.

Undoubted, the 5 GHz range is much les cluttered, most chanmnels are ** - so there is some room to boos ... reliability, and the chance to come near to the data rates - net data rates on WLAN are always factors below the technical data rate. One reason is that WLAN must add delays and puasing - because in a WLAN there is no waranty, that all devices can see each other - very different from a wired network.

2.7 ms? I'm impressed: Wired GbE does <0.1 ms on a 99.9999% reliability. No interferences with microwave systems, no concurrent frequency usage, no mandatory dynamic frequency selection, no mandatory Radar frequenca avoidance, ...

Please dodn't get blinded by the marketing lies of the WLAN (or Powerline/HomePlug) manrketing.

[P3R]

So, is my understanding from your suggestions correct that a N wireless router will not deliver even 200mbps actual throughput...

Only in marketing, not in the real world.

In good WiFi-conditions I would expect better than 30 Mbps though.

...when some are being advertised to perfom at 300/450 + 450 (i.e. Linksys e4200 or ea4500) ?

That's pre-standard equipment that requires specific client support to be any faster. As far as I know that support isn't available in your clients.

Or is it just my network facing bottleneck issues?

Most likely only the wireless parts of your network.

[aahonari]

OK! Well, if you're suggesting that upgrading my network components probably is going to be a futile attempt to enhane my network performance, let me take your time by helping me improve my current *wireless* network.

Aside from my Macbook Pro and the iPads everything else is connected via CAT5 cables to the network. Between my computer and the wireless router there's a dry wall, and distane-wise my laptop is about 5 feet away from the wireless router. Pings to the router from my laptop yield an average of ~2.7ms (as previously stated).

AJA System Test set on 1 GB file size and 720X486 8-bit video frame size results in 3.4MB/s Write and 7.0MB/s read to the Public folder of my QNAP (via SMB). Incidentally, I am waiting for my WD Red drives to arrive, and currently there's only ONE 500GB WD Caviar Blue 2.5" HDD in the unit (just because I wanted to play around with the QNAP) -- naturally there's no RAID config. At the present time, what's being used is a D-Link DNS-323 unit for NAS and the QNAP is going to replace it. My laptop's wireless card is a Broadcom (BCM94321MC) Dual-band 802.11n draft for which the suggested data rate is up to ~270mbps. Notebook HDD is Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325ASG 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s. [assuming that I could reach 50% of the max data rate in reality, I still should get ~16MB/s actual throughput and not 3.5, no?]

One CAT5 cable goes directly to the back of my WRT610N gateway router skipping the gigabit ethernet switch. DNS-323 goes through the switch. Rates for the DNS-323 is about ~2.1 MB/s write 7.0 MB/s read.

Now, I have very much received the point that for better performance I need wired connection. However, as of now, due to physical limitation of how everything is set up, I can't. So, I'd truly appreciate it, if you helped me enhance what I have right now. Unless, I am about to be told, this is as good as it gets!!!!

Thanks...

[P3R]

[assuming that I could reach 50% of the max data rate in reality, I still should get ~16MB/s actual throughput and not 3.5, no?]

I don't even have any n-equipment so I wouldn't know exactly what can be expected but my gut feeling says you won't get as high as that.

1. Only use one network cable to the NAS, no port trunking and only standard MTU (1500).
2. Make sure the NAS connects at gigabit speed as reported in the Speed column at the System Administration, Network page. At least Cat 5e cabling is required for a reliable gigabit connection.
3. Connect the same computer by a cable to get a baseline performance to compare with so you know that it is the wireless that is your bottleneck.
4. I have absolutely no idea about details in tuning wireless (as I only use it rarely and never for heavy tasks) but often the drivers used will have an impact.

There are probably other forums (related to Linksys, routers or client computers) where people are more experienced with tuning wireless for maximum performance.

[aahonari]

OK, now I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with my network setup. I listened to your advice and did a wired test: A) 742 MB file transferred wirelessly from my laptop to QNAP in 84 seconds (wireless N) via SMB. B) Then turned off the wireless card and connected to my laptop via CAT5E+ to my gigabit switch, and the transfer time was reduced from 84 seconds to 70!!! So

Wireless: 742 Megabyte / 84 = 8.83 Megabyte / Sec => 8.83 X 8 = 70 Megabit / sec [This was achieved after tweaking my wireless network - switching from TKIP to AES, setting wide channel and std channel manually).

Wired: 742 / 70 = 10.6 Megabit / Sec => 10.6 X 8 = 84.8 Megabit / Sec.

Need your advice. Thanks...

[P3R]

So you now have decent wireless performance but it sounds like you have a wired fast ethernet connection in there somewhere. Make sure the complete data path from client to NAS is connected at gigabit speed?
Can you show us a screenshot the System Administration, Network page?
Any error packets reported at the System Status, System Information page?

[aahonari]

So you now have decent wireless performance but it sounds like you have a wired fast ethernet connection in there somewhere. Make sure the complete data path from client to NAS is connected at gigabit speed?

Both the TP-Link switch and the Linksys router support gigabit ethernet. A CAT5E cable goes directly from my QNAP to to the one of the 4-ports of the wireless router. Earlier, when I tested the transfer rate wired, I connected my cable via a CAT5E+ to the switch and not the router. So MBP -->Switch -->Router--->QNAP
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Can you show us a screenshot the System Administration, Network page? Done.

Any error packets reported at the System Status, System Information page? Yes. I've attached a screenshot.

[P3R]

Both the TP-Link switch and the Linksys router support gigabit ethernet. A CAT5E cable goes directly from my QNAP to to the one of the 4-ports of the wireless router. Earlier, when I tested the transfer rate wired, I connected my cable via a CAT5E+ to the switch and not the router. So MBP -->Switch -->Router--->QNAP

Make sure everything connects at gigabit speed. We can see that the Qnap does but do all the other links? Usually there are LEDs next to the LAN ports on network equipment that in some way (read the manual) indicate the speed.

Any error packets reported at the System Status, System Information page? Yes. I've attached a screenshot.

Well it's not that bad but you shouldn't have any errors at all. Try with a new cable to the Qnap and it would also be interesting to see what happens if you could bypass the router and connect both the Qnap and the client in question to the switch.