Forumite Members › General Topics › Tech › PC Talk › Network transfer speeds
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Tippon.
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April 20, 2018 at 8:56 pm #19882
My home network seems to be slower than it should be, and I don’t know why. I’ve got a Vodafone wireless router with N and AC, and gigabit ports. My computer and two Buffalo hard drives are connected through 200Mb/s homeplugs, and everything else is wireless. Everything wireless is using N instead of AC. There’s a gigabit switch between the hard drives and the homeplug.
When I transfer files between my desktop and the media PC, I get about 5MB/s max. The computers are both in the same room as the router, one on the homeplug, and one on wifi. My PC, the router, and the two hard drives are connected to three separate homeplugs because of the room layout. My whole network seems to be slow, but the two computers are the only things that I can transfer files between easily.
Other than running cables directly to the computers and the router, what should I be doing to rule things out? Thanks for any help guys 🙂
April 20, 2018 at 9:01 pm #19883Have you tried rebooting everything? Probably have but worth asking.
April 20, 2018 at 9:12 pm #19885Yeah. We had a power cut a few weeks ago, so I didn’t get a choice 😛
It let Kodi on the Fire Sticks access the media PC, but didn’t make much difference otherwise.
One thing I did notice though is opening the network through Windows Explorer was a lot quicker for a while. I’d open the folder and everything would appear straight away. It didn’t take long to go back to normal though, where the various devices pop up one at a time. I’m wondering if something has been timing out, or getting close to it?
April 21, 2018 at 6:46 am #19890Homeplugs can be pants, I’ve stopped using them. I find after about a year their performance drops right off. The 200 mbps will have a 10/ 100 mbps Ethernet socket. A noisy power circuit can really affect them badly. Bandwidth is shared between the homeplugs, so the more you have the worse it gets.
Wireless N. The devices are probably a maximum of 150 mbps and wou;dn’t even transfer that quickly on a perfect connection.
From the PiFile testing I did recently here’s the N300 results:
Devices / Write / Read
N300 to PiFile wireless / 4.65 / 3.75
N300 to DS216j USB / 9.37 / 10.77
N300 to DS216j / 9.41 / 7.29
N300 to DS112j USB / 8.17 / 9.42
N300 to DS112j / 8.60 / 10.20That’s going through a Ubiquiti AC AP with a gigabit connection to a gigabit switch with the NAS boxes attached to the same switch.
This is what happened on Ac433
AC 433 to PiFile wireless / 4.56 / 3.60
AC 433 to PiFile 100 / 11.38 / 11.59
AC433 to DS112j USB / 16.15 / 18.40
AC 433 to DS112j / 17.12 / 20.75
AC 433 to DS216j / 32.04 / 31.16
AC433 to DS216j USB / 36.17 / 35.40As you can see it made a big difference to all but the PiFile wireless and maxed out the PiFile 10/100 Ethernet.
Going to all Gigabit:
Gigabit to PiFile wireless / 4.57 / 3.62
Gigabit to PiFile 100 / 11.38 / 11.18
Gigabit to DS112j USB / 21.05 / 22.92
Gigabit to DS216j USB / 50.87 / 56.72
Gigabit to DS112j / 54.06 / 79.68
Gigabit to DS216j / 94.10 / 105.36Doesn’t matter what we do with the PiFile wireless and yes the 10/100 is maxed out.
However, despite the fact that both NAS are using the same HDD and USB drives and are both on gigabit to gigabit, the speeds are very different. I would expect your Buffalo’s to be at the DS112j end of the scale.
So network speeds are a complicated beast. Synology do a good comparison table of the performance of different NAS here
In your case the first place I’d look is the Homeplugs. I have a spare N300 pci-e card if you want to try that in the media PC to see what difference it makes.
April 21, 2018 at 8:00 am #19892I have also found that Homeplugs become less responsive over time, but I have found that unplugging both ends and rebooting them works wonders (for a while!)
April 21, 2018 at 11:31 am #19897Having recently put in HomePlugs to reach a couple of hard to serve rooms, the loss of performance is is not a welcome issue. Wi Fi is not an option, it has been used and found severely wanting, cable is the preferred choice but almost impossible to achieve due to decoration + tiling + access issues + my mobility issue, so I now hope that more recent HomePlugs are more reliable. In any case I suspect a slow HomePlug set up is faster than EE broadband and infinitely faster then EE 4G, (or more likely No G) in the house.
April 21, 2018 at 11:52 am #19900Don’t worry Richard, 5g will be here soon to avoid you ?
April 21, 2018 at 12:26 pm #19902Don’t worry Richard, 5g will be here soon to avoid you ?
I can feel very confident of that, happily EE are not organising parties in breweries.
Getting reliable voice would be a good starting point, and that really used to be only 2G – when it used to be better.
April 21, 2018 at 12:53 pm #19905Taking a brief ‘honesty break’ I should perhaps say that EE admitted several weeks back that an equipment failure has restricted capacity for a number of months with no fix date yet available. They also gave a rebate on the bill.
April 21, 2018 at 12:57 pm #19906Power cycling the plug at router and slave end often is all that is needed. I have had a gen2 Homeplug on a hard-to-reach security cam installation for the best part of five years with no real issues except an enforced recycling every couple of years. I personally suspect that BT is the root cause as the Homeplug often plays up after BT goes through one of their all too frequent periods off-line.
April 21, 2018 at 1:31 pm #19909That is some reassurance, though the power company does tend to give a everything a regular power cycle. I had heard the suggestion that WAN side disturbances can affect LAN side equipment.
Some years ago I had a long distance domestic (i.e. with the country) data link and needed a couple of modems to carry it. Rather than bargain basement types the company bought real top of the line ones that could do all sorts of magic. The snag was that the end to end comms needed total transparency as they also used command signals. It took weeks to disable all the ‘smarts’ and turn those super expensive modems into dumb versions that were immune to such signalling.
April 21, 2018 at 4:28 pm #19916Full HD H264 cameras @ 15 fps only need 4.1 mbps (0.5 MBps) max so speed isn’t really an issue. But for data transfer that’s the speed of snore ?
April 21, 2018 at 4:37 pm #19917True Dave but when I say the homeplug loses speed I mean really loses speed such that 20fps drops to around 2fps. I suspect it is some sort of handshake issue.
April 21, 2018 at 6:40 pm #19918Blimey that is dramatic.
Here’s a real world test. I’m transferring 35GB of mixed files from an internal HDD in an FX3600 desktop to the DS216 via Gigabit. Averaging mid 40’s MBps peaking to high 80’s when it hits a large file, dropping to low 20’s when there’s a succession of small ones.
April 22, 2018 at 1:52 am #19931Homeplugs can be pants, I’ve stopped using them. I find after about a year their performance drops right off. The 200 mbps will have a 10/ 100 mbps Ethernet socket. A noisy power circuit can really affect them badly. Bandwidth is shared between the homeplugs, so the more you have the worse it gets. Wireless N. The devices are probably a maximum of 150 mbps and wouldn’t even transfer that quickly on a perfect connection…
…In your case the first place I’d look is the Homeplugs. I have a spare N300 pci-e card if you want to try that in the media PC to see what difference it makes.
Thanks Dave, and thanks for the comparisons.
I’d forgotten about the slower sockets on the Homeplugs, and thought that the media PC’s wifi was 300mbps, but just checked and it is only 150, if that.
Thanks for the pci-e card offer, but I’ll hold on for now until I rule everything else out. Hopefully tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll get half an hour to run cables between the two computers and the router then transfer some files to see the difference.
April 22, 2018 at 6:54 pm #19941It’s definitely the Homeplugs. I switched the media PC from wireless to a direct cable to the router first and got the same speeds. Switched my PC to a direct cable, and small files transferred at 20+MB/s, while large files shot up to 100+MB/s. Switched the media PC back to wifi and got 6MB/s for small files and 12MB/s for large files. Tried some photos from one of the Buffalo devices through a Homeplug, and it was struggling to hit 6MB/s.
I’m going to cable up the living room, and try to figure out a plan for the rest of the house. Wifi is spotty at best, so I’m not sure whether to try something like one of the Ubiquity devices, or to run cables to the attic and put a switch up there. The living room’s on the first floor with the bedrooms, so cabling wouldn’t be too bad, especially as we’re planning on redecorating anyway.
Can you see any downsides to buying this cable for inside the house, other than the slightly higher price? For the sake of a few pounds, I’d rather get faster than I currently need and know that it can just stay in place.
April 22, 2018 at 7:51 pm #19946Ubiquity, maybe with an extender to get to the ideal spot is less hassle than cabling up your house. Imo both are good, but cable may not give you wifi where you need it for your phone etc.
I initially cabled my house, but I’m not sure I would do the same today. It really depends how good your walls are at killing wifi signals. Mine are ‘great’ at this so I have a mixture of cable+Ethernet->wifi adapters. However I think if I had cabled up to a suitable highpoint then ubiquity would have been the best solution for me.
April 22, 2018 at 8:26 pm #19952Do not waste your money on Cat 7. Cat 5e is more than good enough and will be for the future. Cat 6 and 7 are a PIG to work with too.
Before you buy anything I have a box of Cat 5e and all the proper tools, I also have all the Ubiquity test kit. If you’re near a station I’m quite willing to pop over and help you do this properly.
April 22, 2018 at 9:16 pm #19958Do not waste your money on Cat 7. Cat 5e is more than good enough and will be for the future. Cat 6 and 7 are a PIG to work with too. Before you buy anything I have a box of Cat 5e and all the proper tools, I also have all the Ubiquity test kit. If you’re near a station I’m quite willing to pop over and help you do this properly.
Thanks Dave, but I’m in the back end of nowhere ?
You’ve just reminded me that I’ve got a box of Cat 5e floating around somewhere though, probably in my mother’s attic. I was about to start cabling the old house during a renovation before I got ill.
I was thinking of the Cat 7 just for potential future proofing, but won’t bother then. I’ve managed to tuck the cable between the media PC and the router under the trim on the patio doors, so Ellen’s happy with it. I just need to sort the cable between my PC and the router, and I can get rid of the Homeplugs.
I’ve just tried switching the wifi on the router to 5GHz only, as everything should now be N or AC, but the Fire Sticks won’t connect. I was hoping that it would force things to run a bit quicker.
I’ve got a wifi repeater here that’s not currently being used, so I’ll try plugging that in up the attic and seeing if it makes a difference to the coverage. I’ll still need to run a cable to the garage eventually, but that’s not a massive problem.
April 22, 2018 at 9:27 pm #19959We’ll if you want to borrow the Ubiquiti test kit just shout. All you do is plug it in to the mains or run it off the powerbank, no internet access required. I then use WiFi Analyzer on my phone to do a survey.
You want it as high as possible, we usually start near the loft hatch as that’s often the central spot of the house. Only very rarely do we need more than one AP. The others doesn’t act as repeaters, they work together.
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