Set Jumbo frame and Cloud Mirror and Ex2 both hang

I have net gear GS110, 116 and Del XPS 7800. All support up to 9k jumbo frames.

I have a cloud mirror and an ex2 cloud. I can disconnect everything from the network and have the above with 9k jumbo frames and all works fine. If one or both clouds are added everything works fine until I turn 9000 jumbo frame on. The page blinks to indicate it accepted the new setting but within a few seconds the web page hangs.

Changing to a different browser tap works fine and firefox is working fine until I go back to the tab with the hung cloud. Nothing resolves the problem until I do a factory reset of the cloud and must start all over. I can start with completely factory settings and only turn on the 9k and both clouds hang in the same way. I can spend hours setting up and backing up every change in settings but no matter what, 9k goes on and the cloud hangs.

Is your pc set for jumbos as well?

Tony,
Thank you for responding.
Dell XPS 8700, GS110TPv2, GS116, Netgear C7000 WiFi router.
I’ve got the latest out of only 2 drivers I’ve ever seen for XPS 8700 Ethernet Realtek driver adapter which bumps jumbo frames from 4K to 9k.
I’ve disconnected everything. The Netgear C7000 has the PC and the My Cloud Mirror jacked in and that’s it
I’ve got a few settings on the cloud but complete factory default makes not difference. I get the same hang either way.I made sure any auto start backups on the Mirror are disabled and stopped. This appears to be making things less complicated.I reboot everything that is connected.
After reboot I wait until the mirror LEDs are no longer blinking. I go to the mirror web page and jump around a bit to make sure it is responding properly, especially the app browser view page so I can see the directory tree and files stored on the cloud. I go back to the root directory (folder) and then go to the settings network tab and turn Jumbo from from off to 9k and hit apply. The page goes dark and says applying and then returns to normal almost immediate. Everything looks fine the LEDs on the cloud are not blinking. All taps on Firefox or chrome work fine except the mirror tab which not longer responds. The drive looks hung with all three LEDs solid blue.
But, Netgear genie and all software that can show it, indicates the cloud is up. I can go to file manager and I have a M: drive attached to the mirror and can traverse the drive paths to see its contents. Now, after some effort, I can use your “WD My Cloud” app and confirm it connects to the drive. I can see the files and folders.I can drag and drop from a hard drive to the M: drive and the copy works fine.
Things look OK but no matter how I enter the IP address (192.168.0.32), it no longer comes up.
I use static IPs in the router and the same static in the mirror network page (192.168.0.32). I use forwarding and triggers (192.168.0.32) in the C7000 but don’t use any on the mirror pages.
OK, after all this writting, I just got an error stating windows can no longer access the cloud.
Best Regards,
Paul MighettoAt home in
Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049
Confidential

I don’t know for sure, but what you’re describing sounds like an environment that is mixing jumbo and standard MTUs.

This is a terrible practice fraught with risk.

EVERY device in the broadcast domain (VLAN, whatever) should be set with the same MTU size. That means your ROUTER, your iDevices, EVERYTHING.

Connecting different VLANs or Broadcast Domains is the job of a router. The router MIGHT be able to support different interfaces with different MTUs, in which case it’s the routers job to fragment received large MTU packets into smaller MTU packets before transmitting them onto the networks that do not support jumbo frames.

On just about all consumer-grade routers, that’s done in software at a tremendous performance penalty.

Tony,
I have the Netgear GS110TP. It is a managed switch. I tried setting all the ports to 9k as well as the PC.The only thing I can’t set to 9k is the C7000 WiFi router which cannot go higher than 1500 because its WIFI and breaks frames down to segments of 1500 sizes. I will have none or all devices that support jumbo on the net at 9k and none on the net that I don’t know if they support jumbo, like TVs, DVD players, AVRs, etc.

It does not matter how many of the ports are enabled or have something attached. As soon as I change a cloud from jumbo-frame-off to any size (9k) I can no longer get the web page for that cloud to update and show the change. Restarting the cloud does not help. But, “WD My Cloud” DOES find the cloud (EX2) but takes longer than usual and the router does show it is connected.
I’m not sure why you are saying all must be set to 9K in my scenario? Why would the GS110TP allow me to set individual port jumbo sizes? If your correct, then once I set one to 9k all of them should also change to the same value automatically. Plus the GS110TP lets me have VOIP ports with 1500 size with all others set to the 9000 size and works fine. Plus, the ports with the EX2 and cloud mirror, do not seam to care what jumbo size they are set to and the clouds work fine until they are switched from no jumbo to whatever jumbo size I’ve set the port to on the GS110TP.
Do you know anyone who as similar NetGear devises who have Jumbo frames working.

One final question, I’m not sure if I have only Western Digital drives in my clouds. The old version of “WD Discover” found my clouds but the new version always says to attach drives and has never shown them even though most other software finds them on the network.
Best Regards,
Paul MighettoAt home in
Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049
Confidential

TonyPh12345
November 14 |

I don’t know for sure, but what you’re describing sounds like an environment that is mixing jumbo and standard MTUs.This is a terrible practice fraught with risk.EVERY device in the broadcast domain (VLAN, whatever) should be set with the same MTU size. That means your ROUTER, your iDevices, EVERYTHING.Connecting different VLANs or Broadcast Domains is the job of a router. The router MIGHT be able to support different interfaces with different MTUs, in which case it’s the routers job to fragment received large MTU packets into smaller MTU packets before transmitting them onto the networks that do not support jumbo frames.On just about all consumer-grade routers, that’s done in software at a tremendous performance penalty. Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.
In Reply To

PAUL_MIGHETTO
November 13 |

Tony, Thank you for responding. Dell XPS 8700, GS110TPv2, GS116, Netgear C7000 WiFi router. I’ve got the latest out of only 2 drivers I’ve ever seen for XPS 8700 Ethernet Realtek driver adapter which bumps jumbo frames from 4K to 9k. I’ve disconnected everything. The Netgear C7000 has the PC a… Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond. To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.

It’s not just setting the switch. You must set all the devices connected to the switch (at least within the same VLAN) to the same MTU value. The port settings on the switch don’t affect any “reality” of the traffic as long as the MTU is set HIGHER than the end systems. In other words, you could set your switch to 9K on every port. That won’t change how systems communicate. The systems also have their own setting.

The switch will allow various ports to be set differently because different VLANs can have different MTUs as well, and if you’re using VLAN Tagging (802.1q) some VLANs on the trunk may be 1500 and some may be 9000. So the port must be 9000. The simplest answer is that every port in the broadcast domain must be set to the same MTU value. You also have to take into account how the various devices calculate their frame size. Some base it only on payload size (and headers are added automatically), some define it as the entire frame, including the headers. I think Netgear is the latter. Instead of 1500, you must say 1518.

If the EX2 is set for Jumbos, and its switch port is set for jumbos: Then if the EX2 transmits a 9K frame, but the destination switch port for that frame is MTU 1500, the switch MUST discard the frame. If the Switch port for the destination is set to 9K but the attached device is not set for MTU of 9000, then the receiving device will discard the frame as a “giant”.

VOIP ports are going to be a different thing because they will NEVER have large packets. The VoIP protocols all are small packets, regardless of what the infrastructure is set for, and your VOIP devices aren’t going to be chatting with things that use jumbo frames, regardless of what their configuration is.

I’ll bet you can find “proof” of what I’m saying by looking at the network statistics on your switch. Metrics like:

  • Overruns
  • Received Packets not Forwarded
  • etc

So, I’ll ask this question: Why do you even want to use Jumbos?

Tony,
I have Jumbo frames working when I move the PC network cable back to the managed switch along with the clouds. But, a problem with Ethernet going down constantly has come back.
My cloud backups are very slow and my EX2 media server causes jittering when playing music and movies. I thought Jumbo frames would help. If so, should I put all jumbo frame hardware on a vlan and would that improve performance? If not, what other performance related options can I set? I only have one managed switch so things like doubling speed with redundancy and adding fault tolerance with 2 cables is not an option and way over kill for a home network.

I would rather have the PC Ethernet cable attached to the router so it will avoid performance hits related to going through the switch first but it seams I can’t have jumbo frames on at the same time. Plus, the router to switch to PC combined connections contribute to the Ethernet going down. If one of them fails, Ethernet is down. Where-as if I only have the router in play, I have half that risk.

What do you suggest? Is Jumbo frames worth it and is there an optimum size I should set? Is running the PC cable directly to the router optimum?
Thanks.
Best Regards,
Paul MighettoAt home in
Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049
Confidential

TonyPh12345
November 16 |

It’s not just setting the switch. You must set all the devices connected to the switch (at least within the same VLAN) to the same MTU value. The port settings on the switch don’t affect any “reality” of the traffic as long as the MTU is set HIGHER than the end systems. In other words, you could set your switch to 9K on every port. That won’t change how systems communicate. The systems also have their own setting.The switch will allow various ports to be set differently because different VLANs can have different MTUs as well, and if you’re using VLAN Tagging (802.1q) some VLANs on the trunk may be 1500 and some may be 9000. So the port must be 9000. The simplest answer is that every port in the broadcast domain must be set to the same MTU value. You also have to take into account how the various devices calculate their frame size. Some base it only on payload size (and headers are added automatically), some define it as the entire frame, including the headers. I think Netgear is the latter. Instead of 1500, you must say 1518.If the EX2 is set for Jumbos, and its switch port is set for jumbos: Then if the EX2 transmits a 9K frame, but the destination switch port for that frame is MTU 1500, the switch MUST discard the frame. If the Switch port for the destination is set to 9K but the attached device is not set for MTU of 9000, then the receiving device will discard the frame as a “giant”.VOIP ports are going to be a different thing because they will NEVER have large packets. The VoIP protocols all are small packets, regardless of what the infrastructure is set for, and your VOIP devices aren’t going to be chatting with things that use jumbo frames, regardless of what their configuration is.I’ll bet you can find “proof” of what I’m saying by looking at the network statistics on your switch. Metrics like:

  • Overruns
  • Received Packets not Forwarded
  • etc
    So, I’ll ask this question: Why do you even want to use Jumbos? Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.
    In Reply To

PAUL_MIGHETTO
November 15 |

Tony, I have the Netgear GS110TP. It is a managed switch. I tried setting all the ports to 9k as well as the PC.The only thing I can’t set to 9k is the C7000 WiFi router which cannot go higher than 1500 because its WIFI and breaks frames down to segments of 1500 sizes. I will have none or all dev… Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond. To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.

Jumbo frames aren’t going to help you at all. If it’s having trouble keeping up with simple streaming tasks, something else is going on. I can stream two or three Blu-rays at a time from any of my My Cloud NASes without issue.

Tony,
In what case does Jumbo frames help?
Best Regards,
Paul MighettoAt home in
Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049
Confidential

TonyPh12345
November 16 |

Jumbo frames aren’t going to help you at all. If it’s having trouble keeping up with simple streaming tasks, something else is going on. I can stream two or three Blu-rays at a time from any of my My Cloud NASes without issue. Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.
In Reply To

PAUL_MIGHETTO
November 16 |

Tony, I have Jumbo frames working when I move the PC network cable back to the managed switch along with the clouds. But, a problem with Ethernet going down constantly has come back. My cloud backups are very slow and my EX2 media server causes jittering when playing music and movies. I thought J… Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond. To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.

Jumbo frames are helpful when protocol overhead hampers throughput.

Tony,
I turned off Jumbo frames on all devices. The network seams good.
Is there a way to find out what the protocol overhead throughput is at any given time?
BTW I stopped dropping connections as soon as I uninstalled all the Western Digital software.I will start reinstalling some of them that appeared to be useful now.
Best Regards,
Paul MighettoAt home in
Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049
Confidential

TonyPh12345
November 17 |

Jumbo frames are helpful when protocol overhead hampers throughput. Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.
In Reply To

PAUL_MIGHETTO
November 17 |

Tony, In what case does Jumbo frames help? Best Regards, Paul MighettoAt home in Berkeley Ca. 94709 Phone, Fax USA: 1-510-900-5049 Confidential TonyPh12345 November 16 | Jumbo frames aren’t going to help you at all. If it’s having trouble keeping up with simple streaming tasks, somethin… Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond. To unsubscribe from these emails, click here.