Computer Related > LAN utilisation Miscellaneous
Thread Author: smokie Replies: 5
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New Thu 15 May 14 07:34 
 LAN utilisation - smokie
I've got a dedicated 1Gb connection between my PC and my NAS - i.e. two NICs in my PC, and the NAS and the PC on their own subnet with a cable straight between them - both have 1Gb network ports and the cable is Cat5E.

I am just "refilling" the NAS - it had some kind of error which support said was possibly a RAID (JBOD) corruption. The network monitor in Task Manager shows that I am only at about 25% utlisation on the LAN. There's nothing else happening on the link. The disks in the RAID are only 5400rpm.

I have two tasks writing to the disk - I use a Sync program and have started off two and the data is coming from SATA drives in my PC. Opening more simultaneous tasks does not increase the %age utilisation. I can see in performance monitor that it is using the intended link.

So why isn't the utilisation higher? I'd have thought it would be pretty much saturated. It has always been like this btw, and is about the same whichever direction the data is moving in.

PC is Windows 7, recently rebuilt.
Last edited by: smokie on Thu 15 May 14 at 07:35
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New Thu 15 May 14 08:10 
 LAN utilisation - Crankcase
Because the bottleneck is the RAID array?
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New Thu 15 May 14 08:24 
 LAN utilisation - smokie
Suppose that's what I'm thinking but that seems a big bottleneck. I'm not sure what I should realistically expect to see, but 25% seems low.
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New Thu 15 May 14 08:31 
 LAN utilisation - Crankcase
Well there's lots of performance tools and monitors to test the array. Could also be something dreary like out of date firmware on the network card and so on of course.

Could even be something utterly ridiculous like the connecting cables got caught in a door once. I spent a long time with reduced performance in a setup that turned out to fly once I'd changed the ethernet cable. Goodness knows why that was as there was no obvious physical damage but it's the simplest thing in the world to try first.

Check all that, then borrow other kit to swap stuff about is all you can do really I would think.

The danger is, of course, that leaving it be means it takes ten hours rather than four, but fixing it takes way more than the six hour difference.
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New Thu 15 May 14 08:55 
 LAN utilisation - rtj70
The bottleneck could easily be the performance of the NAS. What CPU does it have?
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New Thu 15 May 14 11:23 
 LAN utilisation - smokie
The processor is an Atom, Cavium SOC(Dual-Core series) Processor. Here's the spec www.originstorage.com/thecus_N2200plus_specifications.asp . It's not been the best purchase I ever made, I like the features but have had a few problems, and have had to reload it at least once before.

I can easily max it to 100% (seems to happen when reading from a directly attached USB HDD, which seems much much slower than network use - waited an hour for it to analyse a library that takes approx 10 mins over the LAN) but when network syncs have settled down it sits between 40 - 60%

I will try swapping the cable.

I'm usually not that bothered by the performance, it was always a whole lot quicker than the Western Digital Mybook I just threw away. It's just when having to re-populate and the sync software is telling me 26+ hours for about 2Tb I'd like it to be quick.

You're right about time to fix, I can just leave it running over the weekend and Job Done, or faff around for hours, thus delaying getting it restored...
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 15 May 14 at 12:43
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