Network speed ?

[tyler811]

No matter what device I use on my home network when I tranfer media files to the media device, my speed is between 5.86 MB/sec and 5.92 MB/sec. The files are avi and anywhere from 2 gigs to 25 gigs. Is this a "normal" speed or should it be higher?

Specs.
Main transfer pc:
Intel E2200 dual code 2.40 gig, 2 gigs memory, Broacom Netextreme 57xx gigbit wired, WDC WD10EARS 1 terabyte 5400 rpm 64 MB, Vista 32 bit home premium.

Network infrastructure:
Cat 5e wiring with two gigabit ethernet wired switches in between main pc and destination.

Destination:
Seagate ST310003 40NS 7200 rpm 32 MB 1 Terabyte in a USB 2.0 enclosure connected to an Asus RT-N16 Router with a USB2.0 connector.

I stream movies and music to all tablets and pcs of different specs and never had a glitch or hiccup while listening to music or watching a HD movie.

 

[aigomorla]

My Server: R5 array which is based off 6 x 2TB Seagate NAS hdd 5900 rpm on a ARCA Raid controller: - Windows 2008 Server with File Share Role enabled.

Gigabit Ethernet.. no teaming enabled... no cross-wire patch between switches either... Server handles DHCP.

These are to other PC's on the network:
Destination: R0-SSD -> 125mb/s
Destination: Old 750gig HDD -> 84mb/s

From Outside PC -> R5 Array:
From old 750GB -> R5 Array : 32mb/s
From 3TB -> R5 -> 88mb/s

i think ur being limited by the source drive or destination drive like how i was when doing transfers on the old 750gb.
So in your case.. the USB connection itself maybe your bottleneck.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

YES.

I was going to say no, then I saw that you're using a USB 2.0 enclosure on a small SoC based Router as your storage destination, then speeds are going to suck. The RT-N16 is a very capable device as a router, but, like all of these routers with *maybe* the exception of the Netgear Centria (a NAS with a built in router, rather than a router with a built in NAS), speeds are just awful on these.

There is little to improve USB 2.0 speeds, but one thing that you can look into is your hard drive's file system. With few exceptions, almost all of these routers (including yours) are built on small Linux operating systems. Windows uses NTFS, which on Linux has always only been supported using an abstraction layer. This means that NTFS eats a lot of CPU cycles (which are very valuable on a low-powered Router), and has to process data multiple times due to the abstractions layers, which makes for lower read and write performance as a result.

If you insist on keeping your topology the way it is, then if your drive is NTFS formatted, consider reformatting the hard drive to EXT4. This is a natively understood Linux filesystem that can give you a lot more speed. You can see [thread=2321116]this[/thread] thread where the OP converted from NTFS to EXT4 after our recommendation from seeing very slow read and write speeds, and saw nearly a 6x speed increase. You won't see anywhere near that because you will be bottlenecked by USB2.0, but I feel there are still at least some gains to be made by doing so

You can also gain speed by getting off the Windows File Copying system (which quite frankly sucks up until Windows 8). Copiers like Robocopy can get you some additional speed increases by stripping away some of the overhead.

 

[Wing Nut]

I think coolnessdune is correct. NAS will be limited with its components and interface. You should be able to verify it if you have a second PC (desktop or laptop) to test. I'm using CAT5 cables (not e) and get nearly full Gigabit speed between my file server and desktops.