Which NAS do list members prefer?

[mandrix]

Wired only.

One pc goes through a switch.
But my older pc gets nearly 1GB up/down on a speed test.
My main rig gets nearly 2GB up/down on a speed test.
Just my pc to pc LAN speeds have dropped to almost nothing. The only thing that has changed is a few Windows updates. Argghhhh!

I could install earlier backups, but what a pita when everything else is working fine.

 

[paligap]

I'm considering getting a NAS with a 1GbE port and a 2.5GbE port. My incoming internet speed is 1Gb, but my router, an AT&T BGW320, has a LAN port that can accommodate up to 5GbE. Forgive my ignorance, but if I connected the NAS to that port on the router, would the LAN speed be up to 2.5Gbe between the NAS and the router, or would it somehow be limited to the speed of the incoming internet?

 

[steelydave]

I'm considering getting a NAS with a 1GbE port and a 2.5GbE port. My incoming internet speed is 1Gb, but my router, an AT&T BGW320, has a LAN port that can accommodate up to 5GbE. Forgive my ignorance, but if I connected the NAS to that port on the router, would the LAN speed be up to 2.5Gbe between the NAS and the router, or would it somehow be limited to the speed of the incoming internet?

For anything except the most demanding commercial applications, even 2.5GBps is overkill, and the speed of your connection to the outside world has no effect on the speed of your internal network which is only governed by the maximum throughput of your ports and wiring, ie you could have a 5GBps internal network and "only" a 1GBps internet connection - downloading and uploading from the internet would be limited by that 1GBps cap, but if you were transferring files across your internal network (ie from computer to NAS, NAS to streaming box etc.) they could go at a full 5GBps provided that all the hardware connected supported it.

The reason I say 2.5GBps is overkill is that even the most demanding of data streaming only uses a fraction of even a 1GBps connection, so unless you're planning to have a dozen or more devices simultaneously streaming/transferring from your NAS, 1GBps is plenty. Just to put it in numbers a bit:

Device/standard - maximum transfer speed in Mbps (megabits per second)
5Gbps ethernet - 5000Mbps (1Gbps = 1000Mbps)
USB-C 3.0 - 5000Mbps (never had anything close to this, the fastest I've seen on my computer is about 1600 for a SSD to SSD copy)
2.5Gbps ethernet - 2500Mbps
1.0Gbps ethernet - 1000Mbps
USB 2.0 - 480Mbps
UHD 4K Blu-Ray - 128Mbps
1080p Blu-Ray - 40Mbps
Netflix 4K streaming - 16Mbps
192/24 4.0 Quad (Quadio) - 12Mbps
96/24 5.1 FLAC - 8Mbps
48/24 Dolby TrueHD Atmos - 8Mbps
192/24 Stereo FLAC - 5Mbps
Netflix 1080p streaming - 5Mpbs
48/24 5.1 FLAC - 4Mbps
96/24 Stereo FLAC - 3Mbps
48/24 Stereo FLAC - 1.6Mbps
16/44.1 Stereo WAV 1.4Mbps
16.44.1 Stereo FLAC 0.8Mbps
16/48 DD+ Streaming Atmos (Apple Music) - 0.7Mbps
320kbps stereo mp3 - 0.32Mbps

So as you can see, even the most demanding of these applications (4K BluRay) only uses a little over 10% of a 1 gigabit connection - I've ripped many 4K Blu-Rays to my NAS (10+ year old HP MicroServer with a 1Gbps wired Ethernet port) and I've never had as much as one playback problem caused by the network port. If you can get 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps hardware for little or no extra cost (or if money isn't a consideration) on top of 1Gpbs then by all means but lower-bandwidth data will go through your pipe just the same whether the width of the pipe is 1, 2.5 or 5Gbps.

 

[paligap]

For anything except the most demanding commercial applications, even 2.5GBps is overkill, and the speed of your connection to the outside world has no effect on the speed of your internal network which is only governed by the maximum throughput of your ports and wiring, ie you could have a 5GBps internal network and "only" a 1GBps internet connection - downloading and uploading from the internet would be limited by that 1GBps cap, but if you were transferring files across your internal network (ie from computer to NAS, NAS to streaming box etc.) they could go at a full 5GBps provided that all the hardware connected supported it.

The reason I say 2.5GBps is overkill is that even the most demanding of data streaming only uses a fraction of even a 1GBps connection, so unless you're planning to have a dozen or more devices simultaneously streaming/transferring from your NAS, 1GBps is plenty. Just to put it in numbers a bit:

Device/standard - maximum transfer speed in Mbps (megabits per second)
5Gbps ethernet - 5000Mbps (1Gbps = 1000Mbps)
USB-C 3.0 - 5000Mbps (never had anything close to this, the fastest I've seen on my computer is about 1600 for a SSD to SSD copy)
2.5Gbps ethernet - 2500Mbps
1.0Gbps ethernet - 1000Mbps
USB 2.0 - 480Mbps
UHD 4K Blu-Ray - 128Mbps
1080p Blu-Ray - 40Mbps
Netflix 4K streaming - 16Mbps
192/24 4.0 Quad (Quadio) - 12Mbps
96/24 5.1 FLAC - 8Mbps
48/24 Dolby TrueHD Atmos - 8Mbps
192/24 Stereo FLAC - 5Mbps
Netflix 1080p streaming - 5Mpbs
48/24 5.1 FLAC - 4Mbps
96/24 Stereo FLAC - 3Mbps
48/24 Stereo FLAC - 1.6Mbps
16/44.1 Stereo WAV 1.4Mbps
16.44.1 Stereo FLAC 0.8Mbps
16/48 DD+ Streaming Atmos (Apple Music) - 0.7Mbps
320kbps stereo mp3 - 0.32Mbps

So as you can see, even the most demanding of these applications (4K BluRay) only uses a little over 10% of a 1 gigabit connection - I've ripped many 4K Blu-Rays to my NAS (10+ year old HP MicroServer with a 1Gbps wired Ethernet port) and I've never had as much as one playback problem caused by the network port. If you can get 2.5Gbps or 5Gbps hardware for little or no extra cost (or if money isn't a consideration) on top of 1Gpbs then by all means but lower-bandwidth data will go through your pipe just the same whether the width of the pipe is 1, 2.5 or 5Gbps.

Thanks for the informative reply. I guessed that my LAN speed would not be affected by my incoming internet speed, but trying to confirm something like that on the internet can be, well, frustrating. I should have also mentioned that all of my streaming is done wirelessly, and I have never had any problems whatsoever.

The main thing I was wondering about in terms of speed is reading and writing to and from a PC and the NAS. I thought that, since the NAS and the router are both capable of 2.5GbE, why not connect them with a CAT 6 instead of a CAT 5e cable? But my PC is currently connected to the router wirelessly, and although I know how to measure its download/upload speeds, which are very good, I don't know how to measure its read/write speeds to the USB external drive enclosure it's currently connected to via USB 3.0.

I do have a Gigabit Powerline kit that I could use to connect the PC to the router. That may or may not increase upload/download or read/write speeds, but of course, it's not likely to approach 2.5Gb, so I assume that would negate any benefit from connecting the NAS and the router via their multi-Gb ports.

 

[DuncanS]

Thanks for the informative reply. I guessed that my LAN speed would not be affected by my incoming internet speed, but trying to confirm something like that on the internet can be, well, frustrating. I should have also mentioned that all of my streaming is done wirelessly, and I have never had any problems whatsoever.

The main thing I was wondering about in terms of speed is reading and writing to and from a PC and the NAS. I thought that, since the NAS and the router are both capable of 2.5GbE, why not connect them with a CAT 6 instead of a CAT 5e cable? But my PC is currently connected to the router wirelessly, and although I know how to measure its download/upload speeds, which are very good, I don't know how to measure its read/write speeds to the USB external drive enclosure it's currently connected to via USB 3.0.

I do have a Gigabit Powerline kit that I could use to connect the PC to the router. That may or may not increase upload/download or read/write speeds, but of course, it's not likely to approach 2.5Gb, so I assume that would negate any benefit from connecting the NAS and the router via their multi-Gb ports.

Depending on your Wi-Fi speed you might well be able to get fast data packets from the PC to the router, then from the router to the NAS, and your NAS might accept the packet at a high speed (data is not continuous but in packets, so there will be gaps between packets). However, the speed will be much lower on writes to the HDD in the NAS, and will be dependent not only on the actual HDD write speed to disc, but also the type of RAID setting you have as it will duplicate the data as per the RAID setting. So if you have say a 1Gbit/sec data rate all the way to your NAS from your PC it will not write to the HDD at that rate, a typical effective transfer rate for my 1Gb/s all wired ethernet from PC to NAS is 100-200Mb/s. Reading is quicker, usually! If you have a lot of other data flowing around the system especially with multiple streams over Wi-Fi data transfer rates will be lower. Its like the contention ratio on your internet connection sets your effective data transfer rate, which may be 1Gb/s for each data packet, but with lots of users on the broadband link there will be gaps between the data transfers so the effective rate is lower - even though a speed test correctly shows 1Gb/s! As @steelydave has said 1Gb/s ethernet links between all PC/NAS etc. is good enough, so I wouldn't bother with faster than 1Gb/s.

 

[mandrix]

Another way to put it is a 2.5GB connection gives more Bandwidth.
But yeah like was said you could speed up file transfers between devices if they are 2/2.5GB capable hard wired.

My two audio room pc's are limited in file transfers speed because one has 1GB ethernet and the other 2.5GB ethernet. The router can do 2.5. -and I have NAS & Enterprise drives. But as it is pc to pc transfer speeds are about 110 MB/s, less than the write speed of the drives.. If both pc's were 2.5GB capable that would increase some. I don't feel overly compelled to slip a 2.5GB card in the slower pc as yet, though I have thought about it.

 

[paligap]

Depending on your Wi-Fi speed you might well be able to get fast data packets from the PC to the router, then from the router to the NAS, and your NAS might accept the packet at a high speed (data is not continuous but in packets, so there will be gaps between packets). However, the speed will be much lower on writes to the HDD in the NAS, and will be dependent not only on the actual HDD write speed to disc, but also the type of RAID setting you have as it will duplicate the data as per the RAID setting. So if you have say a 1Gbit/sec data rate all the way to your NAS from your PC it will not write to the HDD at that rate, a typical effective transfer rate for my 1Gb/s all wired ethernet from PC to NAS is 100-200Mb/s. Reading is quicker, usually! If you have a lot of other data flowing around the system especially with multiple streams over Wi-Fi data transfer rates will be lower. Its like the contention ratio on your internet connection sets your effective data transfer rate, which may be 1Gb/s for each data packet, but with lots of users on the broadband link there will be gaps between the data transfers so the effective rate is lower - even though a speed test correctly shows 1Gb/s! As @steelydave has said 1Gb/s ethernet links between all PC/NAS etc. is good enough, so I wouldn't bother with faster than 1Gb/s.

So bottom line, I might not benefit from using the 2.5GbE ports in my situation, but the unit I'm considering has 4GB RAM, while the lower unit, which has only a 1GbE port, also has only 2GB RAM. By the way, I plan on using two 12 TB drives in RAID 1, the same configuration (and drives) I have in my current external drive enclosure.

 

[AudiophileStyle]

For anything except the most demanding commercial applications, even 2.5GBps is overkill

If you like to waste time waiting for large blu-ray ripped files to copy to a NAS, then 1Gbps is fine. I’m impatient and implemented 10GbE in much of my network. It’s a 10x time saver that matters a lot to me.

 

[mandrix]

If you like to waste time waiting for large blu-ray ripped files to copy to a NAS, then 1Gbps is fine. I’m impatient and implemented 10GbE in much of my network. It’s a 10x time saver that matters a lot to me.

There's that.
I just copied a 31GB file to two mirrored drives on one pc and to a drive on another pc, and it is time consuming.
The WAN port on my router is 10GB but the 5 LAN ports are; 4 x 1GB and 1 x 2.5GB. I know I can get some speedup but I would have to buy some equipment.

 

[steelydave]

If you like to waste time waiting for large blu-ray ripped files to copy to a NAS, then 1Gbps is fine. I’m impatient and implemented 10GbE in much of my network. It’s a 10x time saver that matters a lot to me.

50gb file takes under 10 minutes to transfer across my 1Gb network - my time is valuable, but I don't find it hard to budget that amount of time for data transfer. Regular 1080p remuxes are generally half that size (and transfer time) and FLAC and SACD rips are 10% size (and resultant transfer time) of that. I guess these kinds of decisions are easier to make depending on what financial strata you occupy, but if I had the disposable income to retrofit my whole network for 10GbE I'd probably use it to buy a 9.1.4 Atmos amp or some new speakers or something that would enhance my enjoyment of music, rather than something that would decrease my transfer time from 9 minutes to 1 minute.

 

[mandrix]

Well the more robust your backup is, the more time consuming it is. I don't remux anything either; everything is kept as an .iso rip in toto.
Different strokes, and all that.
But yeah, making more investment in speed is not as important as keeping enough HDD space for everything for myself.

 

[zdjh22]

10GbitE corresponds to a maximum write rate of 1.25 GByte/sec, and obviously then 1GbitE corresponds to 125 MByte/sec.

With spinning drives, even on a heavily RAID’d NAS, achieving 1.25 GB/sec writes sustained for a large transfer (10’s of GB so no advantage from memory cacheing) is difficult, probably nearly impossible with shingled drives (all 2.5” drives, the cheaper 3.5” high capacity drives). With SSDs it would be easier, with expensive PCIe-based SSDs very achievable. I’ve built very large (36 disk) storage systems that could achieve those rates, but they had 3 independent HBAs on independent port multiplier chains.

My various ARM-based homemade ZFS NAS boxes with 4 RAID’d 2.5” drives can eke out a bit over 200 MB/second during scrubs (essentially reads only, so not affected by the shingled write slow downs). The SSD-based one can do 500 MB/second.

For sure if you are doing a transfer to a target system that has a large amount of system memory, and you are not transferring at one time files of aggregate size larger than that memory footprint, 10GbitE will be faster than 1GbitE - as long as you are not counting the time for all of that data to sync to the target disk(s).