Question What effect does slow home wifi connection has to do with NAS performance?

[modeonoff]

Hi, some people said that a slow home wifi connection has nothing to do with performance of the NAS. Others said the opposite. Who is correct?

At home, I use a DSL modern to connect to the internet. The download speed is up to 50 Mbps while the upload speed is up to 10 Mbps. How do such slow connection affect the NAS?

 

[USAFRet]

Hi, some people said that a slow home wifi connection has nothing to do with performance of the NAS. Others said the opposite. Who is correct?

At home, I use a DSL modern to connect to the internet. The download speed is up to 50 Mbps while the upload speed is up to 10 Mbps. How do such slow connection affect the NAS?

If your internal WiFi is slow....that is what you will connect tot he NAS with. Slow WiFi.

The download speed of your DSL has little or nothing to do with how you connect to the NAS internally.

 

[modeonoff]

I am a bit confused. Do you mean only the upload speed of home wifi has an effect on the connection between my PC and the NAS? At the speeds I mentioned, will it be very slow to transfer file between my PC and the NAS via wifi?

 

[USAFRet]

I am a bit confused. Do you mean only the upload speed of home wifi has an effect on the connection between my PC and the NAS? At the speeds I mentioned, will it be very slow to transfer file between my PC and the NAS via wifi?

The connection between your PC, the router and the NAS is different than what you connect to with the outside world.

How is your PC connected tot he router? WiFi?
If so, that is almost certainly slower than an ethernet cable. As such, it will be a factor in connection to the NAS.

 

[modeonoff]

Yes, my PC is connected to the router via WiFi. That is why I think slow WiFi connection should affect the data connection speed between my PC and the NAS and hence performance of the NAS.

Am I correct that at download speed of up to 50 Mbps and upload speed of up to 10 Mbps, the data transfer between my PC and the NAS is slower than that between my PC and an USB 2.0 thumb drive directly connected to it?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, a slow WiFi connection to the router will absolutely have an effect on connection to the NAS.

Slower than an old flash drive?
Unknown.

 

[BFG-9000]

If your wifi is slower than your NAS then accessing it wirelessly will limit speeds to the speed of the wifi, whatever that is. As mentioned, your connection to your external ISP has nothing to do with the speed of your internal network, so you'd have to test the actual speed of that.

So if your wifi is currently barely keeping up with your DSL downloads at 50Mbps then you should see approximately 50Mbps uploads and downloads from your NAS, which is 6.25 megabytes per second (4-1/2 floppy disks!).

Given that a good USB 2.0 stick should get around an actual 35 megabytes per second read (the advertised 480Mbps speed does not include encoding overhead) then yes, it can be some 5x faster when plugging it into the PC. However, chances are your wifi is faster than 50Mbps, and writes to a USB stick can be quite slow.

Note that many low-end NAS devices use the same CPU types as low-end routers so can be quite CPU-limited. For example plugging a USB 2.0 stick into an old MIPsel router could be expected to deliver 10-15 megabytes per second reads at 100% CPU over a wired connection. Use the wifi and this could slow down even more if the radio uses software and thus CPU to operate.

So the correct answer is "it depends" on what is the weakest link among NAS/CPU, wifi and USB stick

 

[modeonoff]

Thanks for the detailed analysis . Do most of you connect the computer to the NAS directly via ethernet cable? My DSL modern/router is in the dining area while the computer is in another room. If I run a long cable between them, somebody at home will complain.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for the detailed analysis . Do most of you connect the computer to the NAS directly via ethernet cable? My DSL modern/router is in the dining area while the computer is in another room. If I run a long cable between them, somebody at home will complain.

NAS connected to the router.
All other systems connected to the router, either ethernet or WiFi, as appropriate.

Put the NAS next to the router, connected via Cat5e.


That's why its called Network Attached Storage.

 

[LinuxDevice]

Thanks for the detailed analysis . Do most of you connect the computer to the NAS directly via ethernet cable? My DSL modern/router is in the dining area while the computer is in another room. If I run a long cable between them, somebody at home will complain.

I personally avoid all WiFi which does not need to be WiFi. I have wired the house with ethernet cable because of this. Just to emphasize what others have said, the DSL is between modem and outside world, and the NAS is not talking to the outside world (unless you've been hacked or are doing something odd). The router speed to your PC is different than the DSL speed, so ignore DSL. WiFi to PC does matter. If you game, then it is more than just average throughput, it is also about latency, and WiFi hurts latency, though a NAS probably does not care.

 

[USAFRet]

I personally avoid all WiFi which does not need to be WiFi.

Same here. The only things WiFi are those which don't have a LAN port.

Surface Go laptop, various tablets, Kindle ebook....

Anything that does not move is hardwired.

 

[modeonoff]

Thanks for further clarifications. I don't know whether the device my ISP installed is a DSL modern or a router. It seems to be a combination of both. It is called Home Hub 3000 FAST 5566 by Sagemcom. My ISP installed two devices. This is the only one with ethernet ports. There is also a port seemingly connected to a phone line.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for further clarifications. I don't know whether the device my ISP installed is a DSL modern or a router. It seems to be a combination of both. It is called Home Hub 3000 FAST 5566 by Sagemcom. My ISP installed two devices. This is the only one with ethernet ports. There is also a port seemingly connected to a phone line.

Right.
DSL uses a standard phone line, That is where your 'internet' comes in from the ISP.

Connect this NAS to one of the ethernet ports.
Once you're done with all the configuration, all your other house devices will be able to see it and use it.

 

[modeonoff]

Is DSL backward? I asked my ISP but this is the fastest I can get in my area. Given that family member will complain if I have a long cable on the floor running between two locations, within my home, is there anything that I can do to make the wifi data connection between my PC and the NAS faster?

 

[USAFRet]

Is DSL backward? I asked my ISP but this is the fastest I can get in my area. Given that family member will complain if I have a long cable on the floor running between two locations, within my home, is there anything that I can do to make the wifi connection faster?

DSL is currently the slowest type of connection. (barring old school dialup)

But if that is all you can get at your residence, that is all you can get.


Faster WiFi?
Move the router and PC closer together.

Ideally, though....ditch the WiFi.

 

[modeonoff]

Thanks. I guess one way may be that I only turn on the NAS and use the ethernet cable when I need to use the NAS. That shouldn't be very often.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks. I guess one way may be that I only turn on the NAS and use the ethernet cable when I need to use the NAS. That shouldn't be very often.

Why?
Leave it on and connected.

Your router has 4x LAN ports on the back, right? The yellow ones.

 

[modeonoff]

Yes, three unused yellow LAN ports and one unused WAN port. One yellow LAN port is connected to a device which connects to the TV in the dining area. So, I cannot move that Home Hub 3000 to another room without running a long cable between the two locations without getting complaints. I don't backup nor share files 24/7. I don't need to have it on all the time.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, three unused yellow LAN ports and one unused WAN port. One yellow LAN port is connected to a device which connects to the TV in the dining area. So, I cannot move that Home Hub 3000 to another room without running a long cable between the two locations without getting complaints. I don't backup nor share files 24/7. I don't need to have it on all the time.

Put the NAS right next to the router.
Connect it to one of the yellow ports with a short Cat5e cable.

It will be visible to all systems in the house that are connected to that router. Either ethernet or WiFi.

The NAS is meant to be on all the time. Being an actual server, startup time is not as fast as a regular PC.
Just leave it on.

 

[modeonoff]

Actually besides a NAS, is there other better options?

Two main problems I have with multi OS/platform environment are

1. Many years ago I tried to copy some files from one OS to another (I think it was Linux to Windows). Due to very long filenames, drag and drop did not work. I think it was either endless prompts saying that the filenames were too long, had the filenames shortened automatically or some other errors. Don't remember as it was many years ago.

2. I want to preserve original file/folder create date and time. As I recall, drag and drop via MacOS preserved that information but not under Windows.

I read that a NAS can solve these two problems so I considered buying a NAS.

 

[USAFRet]

1. This is a user problem. Why the long file names and path?

2. Preserve date/time.

I just did a test of this to demo.
A Word file from Nov 2021 on my Windows 11 box.
Drag n drop to the Linux based NAS.

 

[USAFRet]

Additionally, here is a group of .RAF files from my camera, that existed long before this NAS rolled off the assembly line.

NAS purchased Jan 2017
Files from Jan 2014

 

[modeonoff]

1. This is a user problem. Why the long file names and path?

2. Preserve date/time.

I just did a test of this to demo.
A Word file from Nov 2021 on my Windows 11 box.
Drag n drop to the Linux based NAS.

1. When I was at school, I conducted experiments which generated long filenames automatically according to different parameters used. There were lots of parameters so long filenames. Perhaps the best solution now is to use NAS which allows long file/path names? Do NAS really accept long file/path names?
2. So the test confirmed that using NAS, original file creation date is preserved.

 

[USAFRet]

1. The best solution is to not encapsulate "data/information" in the path and filename.
Its not just the filename, but the path as well. Folder/subfolder/subfolder/subfolder/Stupidly long filename == problem.
This problem happens in the corporate world all the time. I rail against this continually.

/Weekly Reports/Human Resources/2021/March/Week 1/HR Weekly Activity Report March 2021_Week1.doc
/Weekly Reports/Human Resources/2021/March/Week 2/HR Weekly Activity Report March 2021_Week2.doc

2/3 of that path and filename does not need to exist.


2. Yes.

 

[modeonoff]

I consider to buy a USB-C dual-bay docking station for backup of my main PC while trying to decide if I would benefit from those more expensive NAS. After waiting for three years for Synology to release new models, I am a bit disappointed that at that price range, the AMD CPU does not have a GPU. I am also a bit afraid to go for QNAP due to the often heard ransomware attack.

At this stage, is it better to buy a dual-bay docking station while waiting for a suitable NAS or just go for a NAS or docking station and call it an end?