I’m throwing this question out here since this forum is full of good helping people who knows his (or her) way around computer.
I bought a NAS, a Western Digital My Book Live 1TB to precise, hooked it up to my Netgear CG3100 (cable gateway modem). Now, I have two computers, both Mac Minis (one brand new and the other one from 2007), but when I transfer files to and from the NAS it is P.A.I.N.S.T.A.K.I.N.G.L.Y. slow. Just to open a folder takes at least 5-10 seconds. Don’t even get me started on opening the iTunes music-folder…
I’ve tried connecting to the NAS using AFP and SMB. AFP gives me spikes of fast transfer but usually hovers around 10kb/sec. SMB is more stable. Faster than AFP, but still sloohohohooow.
I want to use the NAS for iTunes and Renoise to use the same folders and settings, but with the slow transferspeeds I get it looks like I’m better off using File Share on one of the Mini instead.
Has anyone been able to do this getting satisfactory results? Preferably anyone with the same specific setup (but that’s probably a stretch)?
Another question is: are you trying connecting your Mac Minis using Wifi or cable connections?
The latter should work a lot better than Wifi since encryption of the data may also take out a lot of initial speed.
Yes, a shielded Cat6 cable… Cat6e? Is there something special with the e cable?
Cable all the way, baby! No, seriously, I have cables running through my apartment like a spiderweb. Will eventually go Wifi on one of the Minis once I get the initial speed up to par.
Not at the cable run lengths you are likely to have in the home to be honest… And especially not with regards to the figures quoted in the first post!!
You might try using wireless on one of your mini’s now just to see if there is a difference.
Perhaps rats chew on one of your cables
Other things that can slow down are slow hubs/switches (with bad collision detection) or attached devices with slow speeds (10mbit). The network can be as fast as the slowest link.
Ok, checked all my cabled and it turns out they’re all Cat5e. Most of 'em shielded (except for the one connected to my TV). Will there be any difference if I get Cat6e-cables instead?
I also tried to hook the NAS up directly into one of the Minis and the speed didn’t improve. More like decreased but was constant instead of fluctuating.
It works when just listening to songs in iTunes or loading a XRNS in Renoise since them files are just a couple of Mb big. Open folders and transfering files are still quite a pain.
I recall something about network enumeration being slow due to specific services being used, this was a Windows specific problem though, but i did a search for you for Mac specific topics that show similar complaints.
This is what i dugg up, if your answer isn’t in there, it is most likely the road to keep following along:
I appreciate you taking your time and effort to help me out. I’ve stumbled over that page already and it seems like a Cat5e should be enough since I only have Gigabit-ethernet on all my equipment (modem, NAS, and computer.) All my cables are shielded and only 1 meters long so it’s not a distance thing. Maybe I’ll try a Cat6e one day just for kicks.
