I come seeking advice on 3 topics:
1) What am I looking for in a proper cable? Because it seems like I've been buying garbage, and when I use a cable longer than 10', there's a huge performance drop.
2) Is there something I can do to make a gigabit network faster for 3-7 users when connecting to the same network share from a laptop hard drive?
3) Is there value in the portable NVME nas units they sell, like the qnap tbs-464? Or is that overkill for this kind of thing?
We're trying to figure out how to speed up our photo sorting machines.
What I'm asking about is all of the little micro transfers we do within the same networked folder. About 1000-2000x a day, 15-45 images each, usually 3-4 machines simultaneously (some of them while the next wave of 1400 photos is imported directly to the drive via USB).
What I want:
...
card readers plugged into...
1 PC laptop w/ shared network folder (data drives are NVME SSDs of 1-2 TB, usually 970/980 or something not far off)
Cable problems:
I'm thinking I'm just buying garbage cables (despite review of the inland pro cables). Currently we experience a massive dropoff in speeds when transferring files on a network shared folder (meaning networking in and moving them within that folder on the laptop). I've never tested it but probably 35-60% slower on the machine using the 25-30' cable instead of the closer one using a 6-10'.
Cat 6 network cable (best buy)
Cat 6-pangea E316505 ... awm 2835 60* 30v 26awg tia-eia 568b.2 utp (microcenter)
Cat ? 24 awg (microcenter)
INLANDPRO IL CAT 6 BLACK 25 FT 5-PK (microcenter)
I've read many times that nothing this short should have performance dropoff, but I'm wondering if I'm just buying garbage that can't even hold up over that tiny increase from 10' to 25'.
1) What am I looking for in a proper cable? Because it seems like I've been buying garbage, and when I use a cable longer than 10', there's a huge performance drop.
2) Is there something I can do to make a gigabit network faster for 3-7 users when connecting to the same network share from a laptop hard drive?
3) Is there value in the portable NVME nas units they sell, like the qnap tbs-464? Or is that overkill for this kind of thing?
We're trying to figure out how to speed up our photo sorting machines.
What I'm asking about is all of the little micro transfers we do within the same networked folder. About 1000-2000x a day, 15-45 images each, usually 3-4 machines simultaneously (some of them while the next wave of 1400 photos is imported directly to the drive via USB).
What I want:
- Faster movement of files on a drive being shared and sorted by 4-6 PCs at once
- Something easy to take on a plane, in a car
- Something durable
- Share a networked NVME drive with 3-7 PCs (via gigabit switch)
- Swap cards every hour, about 800-1400 images (8-15 gb) per photographer (x 4-7 photogs)
- Import directly from USB to the drive into a folder \Sunday Ingest\PhotographerName TimeofDay\
- Different sorters (on the networked PCs) will take one folder each.
- Using photomechanic (a rapid image culling/browsing software, that does lots of little mini file rename / caching things)
- View the chunk of 15-45 files (5-20 mb each), find the competitor number. Create folder (Sun\101\) and move files in there (stays within same networked drive entire time).
- Original PC may take 1-3 seconds to move 15-45 files.
- Networked PC w/ 8' cable takes 5-8 seconds
- Networked PC w/ 25' cable takes 15-45 seconds
...
- In the background, there is a separate web gallery uploading app watching Sunday for any changes, and anything new it adds to the upload queue
- If the data connection is fast, it will rapidly upload small watermarked thumbnails of all images to the website. On a fast connection, it will process a hundred photos in 5-15 seconds.
- It chunks the upload so it doesn't try to process thousands at once. If working properly, it's about 100-200 total, in bursts of 20 photos
- If the hotspot is working well and the uploader is keeping up, it doesn't affect the sorting machines very much
- If it stalled hours ago and no one noticed, and we switch it on and it's now 5,000 images behind, we find that it cripples the network speed of the sorters until it catches up 10-15 min later (and then it's fine)
card readers plugged into...
1 PC laptop w/ shared network folder (data drives are NVME SSDs of 1-2 TB, usually 970/980 or something not far off)
- Switch - TP Link 8 port Gigabit Switch - Easy Smart Managed (TL-SG108E)
- 3-5 laptops manipulating files on network folder
- 1 laptop uploading to website based on new appearances in Sunday folder
Cable problems:
I'm thinking I'm just buying garbage cables (despite review of the inland pro cables). Currently we experience a massive dropoff in speeds when transferring files on a network shared folder (meaning networking in and moving them within that folder on the laptop). I've never tested it but probably 35-60% slower on the machine using the 25-30' cable instead of the closer one using a 6-10'.
Cat 6 network cable (best buy)
Cat 6-pangea E316505 ... awm 2835 60* 30v 26awg tia-eia 568b.2 utp (microcenter)
Cat ? 24 awg (microcenter)
INLANDPRO IL CAT 6 BLACK 25 FT 5-PK (microcenter)
I've read many times that nothing this short should have performance dropoff, but I'm wondering if I'm just buying garbage that can't even hold up over that tiny increase from 10' to 25'.