Slower LAN speed than Internet speed

2

So, this is very weird in my opinion.

My current internet speed when connected to ethernet is 950mbit up and down.

However, when I transfer files to/from my my Apple Time Capsule or my ReadyNAS NV+ I get at most 400mbit.

I'm not very good at networking, but it sounds to me that the bottleneck here is the Apple Time Capsule and ReadyNAS NV+, or could it be something else?

Edit

  • Connection: Ethernet, Gigabit (10/100/1000) using Cat5e and Cat6
  • NAS: ReadyNAS NV+ 2010 year model (I just read somewhere that this model gives around 15-25 megabyte per second at most)
  • Time Capsule: 3Gb, 2013 year model
  • Switch lights indicate gigabit connections.

Andreas Norman

Posted 2016-01-18T23:15:22.183

Reputation: 139

1To answer, you'd have to also give the exact model (year) of Time Capsule and the ReadyNAS and the drives installed. Assuming SATA1 HDD interfaces, theoretically 150 MB/sec or 600 mb/sec and 40 MB/sec or 320 mb/sec being realistic. SATA2 faster by about 2x. The drive speed could be a bottleneck.

I'm assuming your WAN port is Gig and internal switch as Gig, as are your Time Capsule and NAS. Are you connecting wired or wireless? What are you using to test your speed? – Blackbeagle – 2016-01-19T00:35:23.090

I updated my question with more info – Andreas Norman – 2016-01-19T14:52:38.237

@Blackbeagle SATA I (1.5 GBit/s) isn’t any slower than 120 MByte/s in practice. Of course, spinning disks are much slower in most workloads. // Here’s a benchmark with speeds one can actually expect. It’s as expected: Consumer grade NAS devices are slow.

– Daniel B – 2016-01-19T15:04:22.603

Yup. Like I said, most likely it's my old NAS that is the "problem" :) I was hoping for a cheaper problem to fix ;) – Andreas Norman – 2016-01-19T16:50:33.753

Answers

5

400Mbps = ~50MBps
1Gbps = ~120MBps

Assuming you've a 1G network then at most you'll transfer around 110MBps real world, but there are a few potential limits. One being SMB/CIFS overhead and the other being the speed of the destination.

The newer timecapsules have been benchmarked at 130MBps read and 100MBps write so should be able to saturate GigE but older timecapsules cannot. The other issue is if there are other devices accessing that disk and the health of the disk.

If you want a slightly better way of testing actual network speed from point to point try IPerf.

Linef4ult

Posted 2016-01-18T23:15:22.183

Reputation: 3 705

The thing is, like I stated. That I get 950mbit online internet transfer speed. To my Time Capsule I get around 400mbit. I can download stuff faster from the internet than from my network :P – Andreas Norman – 2016-01-19T14:58:17.500

1@AndreasNorman You don’t measure speed to your Time Capsule, but to its disk. This is very different. – Daniel B – 2016-01-19T15:08:52.487

@AndreasNorman Your internet connection is so fast it outpaces hard disks as Daniel has stated – Linef4ult – 2016-01-19T15:13:12.337

That's true. However if I knew exactly what I was doing I wouldn't need to post my question here :) – Andreas Norman – 2016-01-19T16:52:08.597

Asked: 2016-01-18T23:15:22.183

Viewed: 883 times

Active: 2016-01-19T16:53:49.723