Yesterday I received my Vero 4k+, fully updated it and added a NFS share from my Synology NAS. The problem I have is that network is really slow on both ethernet and wifi. Actually yesterday I could not even play a 6GB 2h mkv file, not to mention the second one which is 68GB. Today I made another attempt and the smaller one stared to work fine every time I tried despite me not doing anything in the meantime. Still the large file will not play smoothly and buffers all the time. When I display playback info buffer goes down to empty pretty quick. Not sure what to do next.
Here’s some info:
100Mbps Lan
DHCP connection
content is on Synology Diskstation NAS via NFS share
copying a file from the NAS to a Windows 8 PC is at a rate of 9000-10000kBps so that would give around 72-80Mbps. Measured in Total Commander. Copied from a mounted network drive.
the average total bitrate of the large file is 64.6 Mbps
Thanks guys for your responses. So I have now shared the videos using fstab nfs mount but have not really experienced a significant improvement. I have also installed iperf3 and performed the tests, results are below. Copying from mapped drive as described above still works fine as it did before.
In that case, an iperf3 between the Vero4K+ and a (wired) PC showed good figures but when it was between the Vero4K+ and the Synology NAS, the throughput was both disappointing and unstable, which is what you seem to be experiencing.
So, if possible, try iperf3 between the V4K+ and a PC.
@paw3lk How is the V4k+ connected to the Synology NAS? Specifically, are they both directly connected to the same router or is there a switch (or switches) in the path?
Can you SSH to the V4K+ and run the command ethtool eth0. (You might need to install ethtool first: sudo apt-get install ethtool)
Then SSH to the NAS and again run ethtool eth0. (A quick check suggests that it should be installed.)
The intended layout is that the PC and the NAS are connected to a router, also there is a switch with AV equipment including V4k+ which is also connected to that router. Now I have taken that switch and other devices out of the equation so there is just the router with PC, V4k+ and NAS.
The ethtool results are as follows:
Diskstation
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports:
Supported link modes: Not reported
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: No
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 8
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: off
Supports Wake-on: d
Wake-on: d
Link detected: yes
Vero4k+
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised pause frame use: Symmetric Receive-only
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Link partner advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Link partner advertised pause frame use: Symmetric
Link partner advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: external
Auto-negotiation: on
Cannot get wake-on-lan settings: Operation not permitted
Current message level: 0x0000003d (61)
drv link timer ifdown ifup
Link detected: yes
According to the ethtool output, your Synology Diskstation doesn’t support auto-negotiation, which is a bit of a surprise. It also says the connection is 100 Mbits/sec / full duplex.
From the Vero4K+ ethtool output, we can see that the router is 100 Mbits/sec and supports auto-negotiation.
Where the NAS can’t auto-negotiate, I would expect the router to follow the standard protocol and fall back to half duplex – which, if correct, will cause a duplex mismatch, since we see that the NAS is still using full duplex. The problem with this hypothesis is that you’ve reported 72-80 Mbps from the NAS to a Windows 8 PC, so I’m hedging my bets for now.
If you can get any further information from the router, that’s going to help with the diagnosis.
One other thing, your iperf3 figures are all for reverse mode. What happens when you run it “normally”?
Not sure what “further information from the router” I could get and how. When I log on to it there’s literally no detailed information, nothing close to what ethtool provides.
The Vero4K+, PC and Synology NAs are all directly attached to your 100 Mbits/sec router.
Direct mode iperf3 from both NAS and Vero4K+ works at full speed (~94 Mbits/sec).
Reverse mode for the Vero4K+ still fluctuates greatly and gives an average of around 2 Mbits/sec
Reverse mode for the PC, which was a stable 94 Mbits/sec, has now deteriorated to a fluctuating average 80 Mbits/sec with a large number of retries. (Did you change anything here?)
The asymmetric nature of the iperf3 results still suggests it could be a duplex mismatch. Quite why the V4K+ is affected differently is unclear.
Unfortunately, I don’t know much about Synology boxes. You might be able to run ethtool -s eth0 duplex half to see if that improves matters but you might have to reboot it if it becomes unreachable.
Yes the summary is spot on. I don’t know why it deteriorated, the only thing I did in the meantime was I replaced my router with the switch and then back to the router. I did not reboot anything in the meantime.
I’ve run the command you suggested and now the results are as follows:
The reverse-mode iperf3 figures from the V4K+ are still relatively low – though a lot better – and show a large number of retries. I’d be interested to see what ethtool eth0 now shows on the NAS.
I don’t have a Synology NAS and nor do I have a Vero4K +, but I do have a 100 Mb/s Vero4K and a Raspberry Pi3 running OSMC. I therefore tried to create a duplex mismatch on the Pi3, as follows:
ethtool eth0 # check current status
sudo ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off
sudo ethtool -s eth0 duplex half # separated from autoneg, just to be sure
ethtool eth0 # confirm new status
iperf3 -s
After the duplex was changed to half on the Pi3, ethtool eth0 confirmed its status:
osmc@osmc:~$ ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Half
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: off
Cannot get wake-on-lan settings: Operation not permitted
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
drv probe link
Link detected: yes
The figures are nothing like your latest figures, though the reverse-mode figures are similar to those you posted in post #6. It certainly looks like the Synology NAS has a quirky network interface that, according to ethtool, doesn’t support auto-negotiation. It’s unclear if this is correct or if ethtool is wrongly reporting the state. Out of interest, what model is it?
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ ]
Supported link modes: Not reported
Supported pause frame use: No
Supports auto-negotiation: No
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised pause frame use: No
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Half
Port: MII
PHYAD: 8
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: off
Supports Wake-on: d
Wake-on: d
Link detected: yes
I have Synology DS211j so nothing fancy. What I’m wondering is whether this is some sort of hardware limitation and I’m screwed or is there something that can be done. I don’t know much about how it all works, just seems counter intuitive that with PC it can work at full speed and that with V4k+ it cannot.
The DS211j dates from 2011 and seems to have a gigabit network interface, so IMO there’s no way it should not support auto-negotiation.
I did a bit of searching and your problem is by no means unusual. For example this. Unfortunately, I’ve not found anyone who has posted a solution.
You can try the usual things such as changing ports and swapping cables but I can’t think of a simple solution off the top of my head. Whatever it is, it seems to be an issue with the NAS.
One other thing that might be useful is to see the dmesg output on the NAS when you run things like:
ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off
ethtool -s eth0 duplex half
ethtool -s eth0 duplex full
ethtool -s eth0 autoneg on
I have replaced my current router with a Cisco one to see if it makes any difference. It does not performance wise. What’s interesting is that NAS Network settings show this:
Use DHCP: Yes
IP address: 192.168.2.247
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Network Status: 100 Mbps, Full duplex, MTU 1500
When I go to Port Management on the Cisco router it shows 100Mbps Half Duplex for that port when Auto Negotiation is selected which is the default option. So NAS tells me something different. I can force Full Duplex and the status of that port indeed changes to Full Duplex but it doesn’t seem to make any difference anyway performance wise. There is also a Flow Control checkbox available, cleared by default, again no noticable difference.
