I’m considering getting a NAS and was wondering if the performance is good enough to use that for storage? It would be wired, but I run a Raspberry Pi 4 over wifi as wired isn’t an option for that.
Generally that would be fine, but wifi can mean many things so I suggest to test your throughput with Iperf
Please read this howto
Here are the results from Osmc (wifi) to PC (wifi) if I get a nas it would be wired. How are the results?
While they are not the best results (and you might be able to optimize your wifi) they should be OK for quite some videos especially if you would use NFS as sharing protocol (and Kernel mount).
Question is what kind of quality videos you plan to watch as that would determine what bandwidth you need.
Most my videos are 1080p. What realistically could be the best wifi speeds on the Raspberry Pi 4? I have a wifi 7 router, but know it doesn’t take advantage of that.
I get similiar results with my RPi4B (8GB) and Wifi 4 (802.11n) mesh environment:
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Server listening on 5201
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Time: Fri, 09 May 2025 04:04:01 GMT
Accepted connection from 192.168.178.24, port 53730
Cookie: rtzc2haw7ath3wy4xgs5uz7yekqo2xr7xu5g
TCP MSS: 0 (default)
[ 5] local 192.168.178.200 port 5201 connected to 192.168.178.24 port 53734
Starting Test: protocol: TCP, 1 streams, 131072 byte blocks, omitting 0 seconds, 10 second test
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 9.26 MBytes 77.6 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 10.0 MBytes 84.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 10.1 MBytes 84.6 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 10.1 MBytes 85.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 10.3 MBytes 86.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 10.2 MBytes 86.0 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 10.3 MBytes 86.7 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 10.3 MBytes 86.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 10.2 MBytes 85.4 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 10.1 MBytes 85.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 10.00-10.04 sec 424 KBytes 83.1 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Test Complete. Summary Results:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.04 sec 101 MBytes 84.7 Mbits/sec receiver
CPU Utilization: local/receiver 0.0% (0.0%u/0.0%s), remote/sender 9.6% (0.5%u/9.2%s)
iperf 3.1.3
CYGWIN_NT-10.0 Mandala 2.5.1(0.297/5/3) 2016-04-21 22:14 x86_64
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Server listening on 5201
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Time: Fri, 09 May 2025 04:04:22 GMT
Accepted connection from 192.168.178.24, port 34326
Cookie: vqokcr3ssxh3vzfza66vyvgj3lgoa2c3fkt6
TCP MSS: 0 (default)
[ 5] local 192.168.178.200 port 5201 connected to 192.168.178.24 port 34330
Starting Test: protocol: TCP, 1 streams, 131072 byte blocks, omitting 0 seconds, 10 second test
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 8.75 MBytes 73.2 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 9.00 MBytes 75.6 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 9.00 MBytes 75.6 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.01 sec 9.25 MBytes 76.6 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.01-5.01 sec 9.50 MBytes 79.9 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.01-6.00 sec 9.38 MBytes 79.1 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 9.50 MBytes 79.8 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.01 sec 9.00 MBytes 74.9 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.01-9.01 sec 9.38 MBytes 79.0 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.01-10.01 sec 9.75 MBytes 81.9 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 10.01-10.05 sec 384 KBytes 67.4 Mbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Test Complete. Summary Results:
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 5] 0.00-10.05 sec 92.9 MBytes 77.5 Mbits/sec sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.05 sec 0.00 Bytes 0.00 bits/sec receiver
CPU Utilization: local/sender 0.4% (0.0%u/0.4%s), remote/receiver 1.6% (0.2%u/1.5%s)
iperf 3.1.3
CYGWIN_NT-10.0 Mandala 2.5.1(0.297/5/3) 2016-04-21 22:14 x86_64
Since the RPi3b+ in theory WIfi 5 (802.11ac) should be possible with with double or even quadruple channel bandwidth and MIMO 1x1 … but I’ve no env. to test this in real.
Someone took the trouble to find out whether 100Mbit/sec bandwidth is sufficient for UHD videos and got interesting results: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/eoa03e/psa_100_mbps_is_not_enough_to_direct_play_4k/
So, without a netto/real bandwidth of at least 200 Mbit/sec, I personally wouldn’t use wifi for UHD playback even if buffer effects will mitigate the bandwidth problem.
For FHD video streaming the shown bandwidth values should be fine in most cases.
Should be fine
But you should get proper AC speed
1 Like
Thanks, this helps. I’ll see what I can do to optimize my speeds.
@ludespeedny I have to correct myself. There Raspberry Pi4 build in Wifi even so able to connect to AC Network will only give you 80 Mbit due to the way it is internally connected.
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=294462#p1779432
But for your usage 1080p this should be fine. If you need more speed either go for an external USB Wifi adapter or switch to the Vero V. But all this should not stop you from using proper NAS.
Thanks! I am prob about the max I can get with it then.