When I have upgraded from 2.05 to 2.06, network throughput dropped from 8-9 to 5-6 MB/s and I have mistakenly thought that this is firmware related and also wrote about it in some other post – It is not true, I need to apologize, my mistake .
Later, when experimenting and rolling back and forth between 2.05 and 2.06, have discovered that speed difference was caused by resetting Hubs DHCP setting to Automatic when upgraded and manually loaded factory defaults.
I hope I’m not mistaking also this time, but it looks that LAN performance is DHCP setting dependent (setup → network settings –> network setup): when it is set to Automatic, transfer speed is 5 to 6 MB/s max., when changed to Manual (the same IP or changed to any other) it increases to 8-9 MB/s. Most strange thing, never have seen it before, but with my equipment (WD Hub, router WRT54GL, DHCP enabled or disabled, static lease set or not, many different cables and PC with Intel PRO/100 ETH card) is repeatable 100% each time, with no need (and no effect) if Hub, router or PC is rebooted - speed change is immediate. Also it doesn’t matter if Hub is in standby mode or booted to GUI – I was completely wrong in my previous/other posts, I’m sorry.
Actually this may happen because your Switch failed to Auto-Negotiate the correct port type when it was on DHCP, providing 10 mbps connection instead of a 100 mbps one, switching to Manual resolved the issue as you manually selected the speed.
Since you said that it was working properly in the previous firmware, then there is a big chance that its a bug that should be addressed by WD team.
Tried your suggestion and my transfer speed nearly doubled … using Total Commander, it reports transfer speed in kBytes. Have gone from approx 1,200 kBytes to almost 3,000 kBytes in sustained large transfers. Using Windows Explorer, it reports transfer speed in MB - but this has to be in megabits … the transfer times are almost identical, but Windows Explorer is always a little better. If Windows Explorer transfers in MegaBytes, then my transfer times would be approx 8 times faster than when I use Total Commander.
I think my logic is correct, comparing the 2 programs transfer speed reporting and the 2 transfer times, seem to support what I found is happening on my machine… 4gb ram, i5 Intel chip on a new Asus motherboard and a WD TV Live Hub I have had for about 2 weeks.
I’m “glad” that I’m not alone… However, your max speed, even now when it is doubled is still somewhat low. Did you try with different cable, different port, have you checked eth adapter settings on a PC… etc. Or maybe you are using wireless? In that case your network speed is probably OK, especially if your Wi-Fi network is not “N” and/or Wi-Fi signal spreading conditions are not ideal. Regarding win explorer and Total Commander, ratio between displayed values when transferring files is 1 to 10, but effective speed is the same (1MB/s= 1000KB/s).
You can also try to enable on your network card jumbo packets or increase the size of the jumbo packets. Some times this will increase speed on a LAN, it’s worth a shot.
Transferred an mkv vid file (4.36GB) from pc to hub’s internal storage …started out at 10MBs then slowly drops to around 5.5 MBs. i know its slow. so i experimented something. I have a 1TB external hd connected to the hub via usb so I transferred the same file from pc to the external connected to the hub. transfer speeds started the same at 10MBs and slowly dropped to 7.5 MBs. its faster to transfer to the external than the internal hd? would it be because of hd rpm/read-write speeds? the external i have is from hammer storage, its a coupla years old and I dont know the specs of the drive. weird.
I did change some of the cabling and now have the WD Hub wired, I also have a new Roku XD|S and that is also wired. My transfer times to the Hub are now around 8,000 kBytes dropping to around 4,000 kBytes. With my 2 USB 3.0 WD External drives, I get around 93,000 kBytes dropping to 60,000 transfering between them.
When I bought a Buffalo portable drive a few months ago, it had a Turbo PC program that greatly increased transfer times between my installed drives - almost doubled the speed of the transfers ( that would be around 25,000 kBytes), but has NO effect on the Hub transfers.
I really have no answers and have now accepted the times will be no where near what I have with the external drives.
I did find that my 8,000 kBytes does equal 8 MBytes, so I was wrong in estimating Windows Explorer reporting its transfer times measured in MBits … it is in MegaBytes !.
My times seem to be close to what Tony has and using that as a guide, then I’m doing OK …
