Low transfer speed on my book live 3TB

hey! I am running the same router as he is! Oldie but goodie, at least when running Tomato firmware.

However, yes, you need to know where the limitations are.

However, as Tony stated, if you have a gig switch, do the following:

Connect all devices to the gig switch

attach gig switch to the router

  • This will allow all hard wired connected systems, if they are 1gig, to perform at the expected 1gig speeds.

  • Only connections going outside your network (LAN) will go thru the router. (added) As well as any wireless connections.

Hi everyone. I’m having the same issue as other poeple :"( and I couldn’t find a good discussion in forum that could help me. So I’m posing it here which I people have similar issues.

I recently got a WD MBL 3TB NAS and attached it to a TrendNet TEW 631BRP Wireless router. The router is not gigabit ethernet capable. I use a laptop (Win 7) to connect to MBL and transfer my files. The cables I used to connect MBL, laptop and router are all Cat5e. However the transfer rates are slower than what it should be.

When I connect my laptop to the router through wireless connection ( full signal and 54Mbps) and start transfering files, transfer rate is 1.5MB/s. Obviously this is lower than 54Mbps. (1.5MB/s =~ 10Mbps.) Assuming that MBL is connected to router with 100Mbps and laptop with 54Mbps, the transfer rate should be about 6-7 MB/s.

Connecting the laptop to the router through cat5e cable ( less than 5ft)  worsens the problem. Data transfer rate becomes about 100-150 KB/s which is waaaaay less than 100Mbps. I believe transfer rate in this mode should be about 12MB/s.

I tried connecting MBL and my laptop through a crossover cable to measure direct data transfer rate. Basically the ethernet LEDs on both MBL and laptop are off which means they are not connected at all. I don’t know what is causing this. Unfortunately I don’t have any other computer to test my lan speed. I could use my Android phone/Tablet if I knew what application could give access to a network place.

I think this is my router’s fault, especially because connecting through LAN reduces my speed. I couldn’t find any option in my router settings that would say what is connection speed between MBL and router or if the router is using a slower connection speed. I appreciate any suggestion on how to test my connections, router, MBL, check or change any setting that might help to increase this transfer speed.

First of 54mbps is not fast enough, you should look to upgrade your wireless card on the laptop. Secondly, I would start looking the drivers and settings for the NIC card in the laptop with regards lan speeds. I lean more to a computer software or hardware problem, than a router in this case.

yes  seyyed4li.

It seems you did not read all the posts carefully… I did mention, those speeds are normal for Wireless G. 

See  http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=374

But for wired, yes you seem to be having issues. However, read this for better understanding. It is a bit old doc, but still applies. Newer components and SSDs will shield better results,

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321-3.html

Thought I’d offer my experience here, I bought my MBL around a year ago.

Out of the box, I plugged it into my 10/100 router using two cat 5 cables, one between MBL and router, the other between router and desktop PC. Desktop PC had gigabit LAN capability - but obviously with a 10/100 router the router was a bottleneck. I achieved transfer rates between MBL and PC of 4 megabytes / second - slow, I thought, for a 10/100 link.

Disappointed, i researched and found complaints online about slow MBL transfer rates. So I decided to test the MBL by plugging it directly into my laptop with a cat 5 cable. Again, 4 megabytes / second, slow. Not sure what speed the laptop LAN port was, probably 10/100, but because this was well below what I should have achieved I therefore formed a view that the MBL was either a faulty or simply slow device and would soon be replaced.

Over the last year, my network has grown considerably - now using a gigabit router, quite a complex belkin av500 powerline connection with 5 points, but the MBL was was still connected to the network via the same old 10/100 router (for geographic reasons). Never got more than 4 megabytes / second.

Interestingly, around a week ago, I begun to ready myself for upgrade to a Qnap or similar NAS to replace the MBL at last. Nearly bought one, but, Before doing so, I thought I may as well upgrade the final piece in the puzzle, the 10/100 router. Replaced it with a netgear gigabit switch, and while I was at it, ran a cat 6 cable direct to my PC to bypass any potential bottleneck my powerline 500mbps network might create.

Fwoar - hasn’t that changed things. The light on the back of the MBL suddenly flicked from orange to green, and I’m now getting transfer rates of 39-42 megabytes / second on a sustained transfer of 2 TB. Accessing it simultaneously from two other devices while that transfer is running is giving me sustained rates of 5-10 megabytes / second on those second and third transfers.

My opinion of the MBL has changed and the Qnap idea has now been shelved.

Admittedly I also did a firmware update on the MBL when I upgraded to the gigabit switch, whether WD changed any performance settings with that upgrade I don’t know. But I have subsequently formed the view that the MBL is not a slow device - it’s clearly just highly sensitive to the network it’s connected to.

Personally, I would never even attempt to use a wireless connection to transfer 2tb of data onto an MBL. Streaming wirelessly from it once everything is copied across, sure. But for anyone having problems with wireless or 10/100mb connections, I strongly recommend that cat 6 cables and gigabit routers are the first things I’d be trying.

Hope my experience helps someone -

M

An interesting addition to the above,

I also have noticed that when sending files TO the MBL, I can achieve sustained rates of 60 megabytes a second provided the source of data is the solid state hard disk in my PC, when I can only achieve 39-42 when transferring from the MBL to one of the standard internal WD drives in my pc. This suggests to me that the MBL is faster than either of the two WD drives in my PC.

That is correct, that is why you will hear people say “all networks are different”, components are a big part of it. 

Check this article:  http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321-3.html

Oldie but the concept still applies.

I don’t know why my previous attempt to conncet MBL directly to my laptop failed. But this time I could connect them directly and got 33MBps transfer rate.

I used a cat.5e cable, and I had to set static ip for both MBL and my laptop. After assigning 1Gbps setting on my laptop network adapter driver ( I had to do that manually) I got that 33MBps rate which means my cat5e cable is the bottleneck now. I don’t have cat.6 cable yet.

I don’t know why with dynamic ip I couldn’t find MBL on my network. Probably due to windows configurations that I don’t remember, windows was assigning an ip address with a range different than what MBL sets as default. Anyway 33MBps is good enough for me. I might get a gigabit router later, but for now I will just use direct connection for my transfers.

I’m very dissapointed because of WD Live speed. It’s very slow responding and poor transfers are annoying.

My config:

  • Router RT-N66U configured with 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, NAT acceleration enabled

  • Ultrabook Asus UX32VD connected to router via 5GHz network. 4 meters from router. Signal strength excellent. Windows 7, no other transfers like torrent, etc.

  • WD Live 3TB. Twonky server off, Itunes off, newest firmware MyBookLive 02.43.03-022 : Core F/W

Please tell me what am I doing wrong? Transfers (reading/ copying from WD Live) are only: ~5-7 MB/s. Only one transfer session at once of course. What transfer should be with this config?

wdlive.PNG

That’s a bottleneck of your WiFi, not the MBL… Try a wired connection and see how it improves.

I will try…but it is one of best routers on market…

best router has nothing to do with wifi threadholds. And yes, you are right, it is one of the best.

However, you are comparing apples to orange. MBL has no knowledge of Wifi whatsoever. So, in order to see if there are issues, copy a file using a wired connection. If that is ok, then wifi is a totally different story non-MBL dependent whatsoever.

Now for wifi, you need to know what protocol you are connected (a/b/g/n/ac) and what speeds you get. BTW, you will never get the actual speeds. See  http://www.speedguide.net/faq_in_q.php?qid=374

I use 802.11 N with 5GHz network. My ultrabook with 802.11N 5GHz comaptible card is 3.5 meters from the router. Singal strength is maximal. What should be THE THEORETICAL speed with that config? I read linked article. Is this really only 4-10 MB/s on 802.11N? Very disappointing. My WiFi config below. As you can see shannel bandwidth is set to 40 MHz, N only, etc.

I have just connected laptop to router with wire and transferred big and small files. Transfer is 9-13 MB/s (max) from WD Live to laptop and 9-11 MB/s (max) from laptop to WD Live 3TB. WiFi network is offline (to be sure that only LAN is active). 5 MB/s faster but shouldn’t be faster on the wire?

screen.JPG

Welcome to protocols vs reality   :smiley:

Yes, for Wifi. You might be able to get better speeds, but you will have to play with it and try different settings. 

For gig, sounds a bit slow, verify you are really connected at 1gig for both devices. For MBL, you can compare the back LEDs to see if connected at 1gig. See manual. Also make sure you have cat5E cables or newer.

Also, just like wifi, the actual speed will never be 1gig. And it will vary, depending on hardware, see:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321-3.html

Wish there was a new article with newer hardware, but you will get the idea…

Good luck,

What model ultrabook do you have?

Thanks.  I will check all devices and cable. LAN cable is connected via USB adapter.

My ultrabook is Asus UX32VD -R4002H

Well, I just did a quick google.

The  Asus UX32VD doesn’t have built-in wired ethernet so you’re using a USB adapter, right?   Those are not usually very fast.

Also, just overall, the Asus UX32VD got REALLY bad network performance benchmarks in several reviews I’m seeing.

http://www.laptopmag.com/review/ultrabook/asus_zenbook_prime_ux32vd-db71-review.aspx

Don’t know if it’s applicable or not – didn’t do that much digging.    But something to be aware of.