![lan speed test 2 lan speed test 2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ts0xP.jpg)
I plug my computer and NAS into the same switch and then connect my switch to the wireless router. Lastly, you should try to keep your two machines (NAS and PC) connected to the same switch or router.
![lan speed test 2 lan speed test 2](https://www.technibble.com/articlecontent/2010/07/lan-speed-test.jpg)
To get really high numbers, you’ll need RAID 0 for traditional hard drives, NVMe for SSDs or 10GBe devices. The major point to get from here is that the hard drive is a major limiting factor and is the most likely reason you will only see results range from 30 to 80 MB/s. You basically want to make sure you have CAT 5e or CAT 6a/7 cables. Overall, however, this is not going to make huge difference, so don’t go out and start replacing all your cables. Also, the length will make a difference if the cables are very long. If your cables are old or if they are close to power sources, it could affect performance. Network CablesĪnother aspect to all of this is the cabling. This basically means if you’re trying to transfer files from a really old computer and even if you buy a gigabit ethernet card, don’t expect to be getting anywhere near the max 125 MB/s transfer rate. The latest PCI Express version will get you a max of 985 MB/s, so that makes a huge difference. That may sound higher than the maximum for gigabit ethernet and it is, but the bus is shared across the whole system, so you never really get that speed. The bus speed makes a big difference.įor example, if you are using an older PCI bus, the data transfer rate is only 133 MB/s. Bus SpeedĮven if you have a fast hard drive, the data still has to transfer from the hard drive to your motherboard and then to the network card. These drives can read and write up to 3000 MB/s, which is well beyond Gigabit Ethernet. However, to get the results I showed you at the top (close to 110 MB/s), you most likely need to have a super-fast NVMe SSD drive. When you jump up to an SSD, then things will get faster. That means you won’t even be able to past that without going to more expensive configurations like RAID 0,1, or 5 with actual hardware RAID controllers. If you read online, you’ll find that even most hard drives (SATA 3.0 GB/s) will max out at a read speed of 75 MB/s. On my network, even with gigabit ethernet, I only get around 40 to 50 MB/s when using a traditional platter hard drive. If you have a computer with a 5400 RPM, your transfer rate will be a lot slower than if you have two SSD drives in a RAID 0 configuration! How so? Well, it depends. One major limiting factor is the hard drive speed. There are several other factors that determine your final transfer speed between two devices. So as we mentioned above, network transfer speed depends on the type of ethernet you have on your network, but that’s not the only factor. If you need to lay down new cabling, it should be Cat 6a or Cat 7. Luckily, Cat5e cable can handle 10GBe over shorter distances. If you’re working with a ton of video files that need to be transferred over the network, upgrading your hardware will greatly improve your workflow. You’ll, of course, need a switch that can also handle 10GBe, but as you can see from the chart, the transfer speed is 10 times faster than what most people use right now. If you have a gigabit ethernet card on your computer, your router or switch is gigabit and the receiving device also has a gigabit ethernet card, your max transfer speed jumps to a much better 1000 Mbps or 125 MBps (125 megabytes per second).Īgain, you won’t get that theoretical speed, but you should be getting anywhere from 70 to 115 MBps depending on the type of files you are transferring and your network setup.įinally, the latest devices are upgradeable with 10GBe network cards. Note that even if your computer has a gigabit ethernet card, you won’t get those higher transfer speeds unless all the devices that the data is being transmitted through support gigabit. If you are getting something really low like 1 MBps or less, there are reasons for that which I will mention below. You’ll probably end up somewhere around 4 to 8 MBps. This means that if you don’t have a gigabit router or switch and gigabit network card on your computers or NAS, the maximum speed you’ll be able to transfer a file across your home network is 12.5 MBps.Īlso, in the real world, it’s impossible to actually get that theoretical maximum. It’s much easier to convert to MBs since that is something we are all familiar with rather than bits. That is translated into 12.5 megabytes per second ( MBps or MB/s). There is standard 100 Mbps ethernet, which is what most people have at home.