Dual NIC cards for faster LAN transfer rate to NAS?

[reddragon5]

Hello ladies and gents,

I have a 5 terabyte NAS at the office where I work. The NAS has 2 Ethernet ports that can run in tandem for optimal transfer rates. Those 2 Ethernet ports go to a switch, which in turn is connected to 6 or so computers. An integral part of my work is reading/writing data from the NAS, and I'm looking for ways to increase the transfer speed at which the data is sent and received.

Therefore, can a person leverage 2 NIC cards on each computer tower to boost the transfer speed? If so, any ideas on how to pull it off? I haven't found much info on the net regarding this topic, so any advice is appreciated.

Each computer is running Windows 8.1. Let me know if there's any other information crucial to exploring this scenario further.

Thanks
-Kevin

 

[bill001g]

Not for a single copy but you might get multiple machines to use more. You require a special switch that support link aggregation...ie 802.3ad

Your first problem is can the nas really produce data at more than 1g. Most are bottlenecked by the drives.

The next issue it is really almost luck as to which connection it uses. With that small a number of machines you can easily get one connection overloaded and almost nothing on the other.

Still the first calculation to do is if the NAS can even do more than 1g. Generally you need a fairly fast array of disks to even think to do it.

 

[bit_user]

I briefly investigated teaming the dual NICs on my PCs to enable faster transfers, but it seems you must have a switch that supports this, and even then it's not clear it will improve the maximum speed between two computers.

The route I went was to buy two used 10 Gigabit PCIe cards on ebay for $35 each. Since my PCs are within close distance, I used a direct connection between them (cable was another $35 - it's not RJ-45, although some newer 10 Gig NICs do support that). Then, just update your routing table on each PC to use the 10 Gig connection for communication between them, and you're set.

The only problem is scaling. I can upgrade the NIC in the server to a card with 2 ports, and move the current NIC to another client PC. So, it's easy to reach 2 clients, this way. That's all I really need. Gigabit is fast enough for the rest of 'em. For now.

Since you're dealing with a NAS, I recommend either replacing with a PC or upgrading to a new model with a 10 Gigabit interface, as some of the enterprise models are now starting to feature.

 

[bit_user]

Your first problem is can the nas really produce data at more than 1g. Most are bottlenecked by the drives.

Still the first calculation to do is if the NAS can even do more than 1g. Generally you need a fairly fast array of disks to even think to do it.

For a 5 TB NAS, it should have no problem exceeding 100 MB/sec. On a fileserver I built in 2011, with a humble dual-core AMD Phenom II, software RAID-6 easily exceeds 350 MB/sec read and about 200 MB/sec write.

 

[bit_user]

Two examples of NAS boxes with 10 gigabit interfaces are Synology's DS2015xs and QNAP's TVS-x63.

New NAS NICs can be found for a little over $200.

Unfortunately, a switch might be the biggest cost item. You could one with just a few 10 Gigabit ports, such as a Cisco 500x series, for as low as $1k, new.

 

[reddragon5]

Thanks for the replies guys. The switch and the NAS both support link aggregation.
I had an idea today: maybe one can leverage both ipv4 and ipv6 protocols at the same time. ipv4 utilized by 1 card and ipv6 utilized by the other. Or maybe there's a type of NIC card with 2 ethernet ports on it that can leverage the 2 protocols.

Right now we're getting 85 mbits/second read rate from the NAS. That's when both ethernet ports on the NAS are connected to the switch. This is a little over double the rate of one of those ports connected to the switch.

I'm going to do some more research and see if there's anything else I can add to the discussion to help facilitate a solution.

 

[bit_user]

85 mbits?!? You don't mean 85 MBytes/sec? My Raspberry Pi can reach 75 Mbits/sec!

I'd say keep it simple. Mixing protocols just sounds like asking for trouble. Whatever you do, good luck.