[Spyderturbo007]

I just picked up a Synology DS209 and hooked it up to my network. I never bothered looking before, bcause I wasn't doing large file transfers, but it seems as though I'm only running at 100Mbps. I'm running all Cat 5e in my house, a DLink DIR-625 and a 3Com Gigabit Switch 5. My Xbox 360, desktop PC, ReplayTV and my Synology are all wired. Everything else is wireless.

I tried running just the router, switch and NAS and that didn't work either. I also tried forcing Auto 1000Mbps on the desktops internal Intel Pro 1000/MT card, but end up getting "cable unplugged" message. It show the PC is searching for a connection for about 5 seconds, but then I get the cable unplugged message.

Anyone know what's wrong? I'll be doing a lot of large file transfers and really wanted the additional speed.

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The DIR-625 isn't listed as having Gigabit network support. It only does 10/100Mbps.

[Neil Jones]

The DIR-625 isn't listed as having Gigabit network support. It only does 10/100Mbps.

[dsenette]

but it seems as though I'm only running at 100Mbps

have you verified that? how did you verify it? if you leave your NIC set on auto does it show as connected at 100mbps?

[Spyderturbo007]

The DIR-625 isn't listed as having Gigabit network support. It only does 10/100Mbps.

But when I did the test, I had everything connected to the switch, so the speed of the LAN ports on the router shouldn't matter, right?

have you verified that? how did you verify it? if you leave your NIC set on auto does it show as connected at 100mbps?

Yep, the connection icon shows as connected at 100mbps.

I did a print screen during a file transfer to my NAS.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 12 March 2010 - 08:40 AM.

[dsenette]

does the NAS have any kind of interface to show what speed it's running at? there's basically no configuration on that switch that you can change or anything. i would imagine there's not much likely hood of you being able to take one of the devices to another location that has known gigabit networking?

[Spyderturbo007]

Actually, there is a resource monitor. I also edited my previous post to include a picture of the PC's usage.

[dsenette]

unfortunately that doesn't really show the link speed....just the kb received...hard to verify who's the problem here. is it the switch? does your computer just not like working at gigabit speeds?

[Spyderturbo007]

Ah, I see what you are saying. I did find this poking around in the control panel of the NAS.

Maybe it is connecting at 1Gbps?

[dsenette]

yeah...it looks like the NAS is working at gigabit speeds....so why isn't your desktop? as a stab in the dark, have you tried updating the NIC drivers on the computer?

[Spyderturbo007]

I haven't because it's a Dell XPS, I have the latest Dell drivers installed and Windows update doesn't find anything. Can I safely updated using a driver that I find off Intel's website, provided I can find one. I've read that you shouldn't use the manufacturers' drivers on an OEM system but I don't know if that's true.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 12 March 2010 - 09:43 AM.

[dsenette]

depends on the driver. dell doesn't customize much in the NIC drivers, you should be fine getting them straight from intel (of course it's just an experiment) push comes to shove you just uninstall those and put the dell ones back on if needed

[Spyderturbo007]

Ok, I'll give that a try. I found the drivers on Intel's website, but it requires uninstalling the NIC before updating the drivers. I'll have to do that when I get home from work since I'm playing with this over a remote session.

I'll report back on what I find. Thanks a bunch for your time dsenette, I really appreciate your help!

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 12 March 2010 - 09:45 AM.

[Neil Jones]

The DIR-625 isn't listed as having Gigabit network support. It only does 10/100Mbps.

But when I did the test, I had everything connected to the switch, so the speed of the LAN ports on the router shouldn't matter, right?

Well, yes it will actually because the simplest use for a switch is to provide more network ports than the router has room for. These will all go through the router at some point as the switch will be cabled to it, otherwise it won't actually do a fat lot.
In any part of a network the speed of it becomes limited by the slowest device going. In your case your router doesn't have Gigabit support. Therefore you can feed it as many Gigabit devices as you want but they won't run at Gigabit speeds because your main box isn't Gigabit.


It's kind of like water running along a pipe. You can have the fattest pipe going to feed the water into a huge water butt, for example, but if you have thinner pipes before the biggest pipe, you aren't going to collect water any faster than you would if all the pipes were fat.

Edited by Neil Jones, 12 March 2010 - 03:40 PM.

[dsenette]

the issue is that he's not getting gigabit on the lan. he's not concerned about past the router

[Spyderturbo007]

Well dsenette, you are genius. I updated the driver to the newest version from Intel's website but for some reason I was still connecting at 100Mbps even after the driver update. I started poking around in the configuration and found some built in diagnostics that weren't present in the old version. I ran the connection test and low and behold, I got this result:

"The cable connected to this port is missing pairs needed to connect at 1000mbps".

It turned out that the patch cable I was using wasn't wired correctly. They were run by me, but terminated by someone else because at the time (about 5 years ago) I didn't know how to terminate cabling.

Anyway, I made up a new patch cable quick and Viola' I'm running at 1Gbps!

Thanks again for all your help. I was just able to transfer a 1.47GB movie to the NAS in about 40 seconds.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 12 March 2010 - 05:24 PM.