WD MyCloud Slow Read Speeds (10Mbps) when Connected via ActionTech router: Solution

While configuring a WD MyCloud  I noticed incredibly slow read speeds in the range of (7-9Mbps – i.e. a 10Mbps connection.)

Write speeds were in the range of 60 -70 Mbps (expected / acceptable for a 100 Mbps NIC)

(Yes I know best to upgrade to a gigabit NIC… but that’s not the point.)

I experienced this problem only when the PC and MyCloud (NAS) were connected via an ActionTech router (MI424WR-GEN3I) from Verizon. When I connected the PC to the MyCloud via (gigabit capable) switch (so the switch connects the PC and NAS before hitting the router) I got read speeds slightly higher than the write speeds  – as expected.

So:  

   router : switch : PC : NAS  – OK

   PC : router :  switch : NAS or  PC : router : NAS – both yielded 10Mbps reads

This narrowed the problem down to the router.  Seems that having a port configuration of 1000 Mbps and 100 Mbps (regardless if explicitly set or auto-detected) throttles the reads back to the 10 Mbps range instead of 100 Mbps – bad speed negotiation.

The fix/workaround was to go into the port configuration and “downgrade” the speed of port the My Cloud was on to 100 Mbps.  Note: It did not matter if there was a gigabit switch on the down side of the router (between the router and NAS)

(On the ActionTech router settings:  Advanced > Port Configuration > Change port speed from Auto / 1000 to 100)

I hope this helps some folks experiencing similar problems.

(I had searched other posts and the Net for a solution but came up empty.  WD tech support didn’t offer much help other than to point to the posts and failing requesting a RMA.)

Used the free LAN Speed Test Lite to test the network read and write speeds.

2 Likes

Welcome to the Community and thank you very much for sharing your experience. This is helpful information.

1 Like