NASLite Network Attached Storage

During this weekend I have moved lots of files to a new NL box, I have experienced several drops in connection with NL during file transfers, files has been as big as over 1Gb and tried to move two (sometimes more) at the same time that large. Is there a way to control the drop out connection? I have gigabit network with hp procurve switch except for an Airport Express that use 100 (I will change this to a gigabit router later), can this be the bottleneck that causes this? Any advices? I am a bit worried as I want to do backup services at night and I want to be sure it is working correctly. All is connected with wires and not wireless and goes thru the Airport Express first. If I turn off some of the services (ftp, UPnP etc), will that make a difference? Cable quality? Cable length?

Thanks
Soren

It would help to know what platform you are using (MacIntel, MacPPC or Windows) and what protocol (AFP, SMB/CIFS). There are known bugs with memory limitations, timeouts, etc. with the various platforms. The problem is not with NL.

Like Scott said, a bit more about your infrastructure is needed to give any usable advice. As far as cable length, the limit for Ethernet is 100 Meters or 316 feet. Any decent CAT5 cable should do for 100Mb/sec and even 1Gb/sec if it is of consistent quality and terminated with quality jacks. My guess is that cable is not your issue. From my experience I would be looking at winblows.

Mike

I use MacIntel and Windows XP machines and I have the same problem on both. Suddenly it drops the connection in the middle of a transfer giving me errors that the server is not connected or can not reach the server. The following protocols are activated (TELNET, HTTP, SMB/CIFS, NFS, DAAP, UPNP) I am using the SMB/CIFS to moving the files. Distance seems to be no problem then.. only about 20 meters. I have my servers in my garage

Thanks for your time

Soren

I have run, or in some cases tried to run, NL on about 20 different boards/computers. Some have worked great out of the box and others just refused to work or did just the thing you describe. I learned early on that it is best to eliminate the basic stumbling block of the NIC and just use a very good one out of the gate. First off try moving the NIC to a different PCI slot. I don't need to get into the technical reasons why this may work, just try it and see if it fixes the issue. If not then the second likely issue is with the NIC you are using. This is easy to eliminate by just installing a good NIC like an Intel or one of the older 3Coms, see the hardware compatibility charts. I keep a few of the 3Com 3C905 NICs around just for testing since they work flawlessly with NL. These are dirt cheap, I see them for $1.00 USD EVERYWHERE! If one of these fixes your issue then you can leave it in or move to a Gigabit card.

In other cases it was the mother board that refused to work and nothing less than a swap out would fix the issue. I have run a slew of different MB on NL through the years from an Intel Pentium powerUp at 83MHz in am old Compaq 486 server to most of the modern processors on a slew of chipsets. Trial and error are about the only sure answer I have for you here. Try it and if it works then....

Mike

Also, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) PPC has a quirk in a G3 or G4 with less than 1G RAM. Depending on RAM installed, files will time out or simply lock during xfer, sometimes requiring a forced reboot to stop the failed xfer process. It happens with SMB or AFP and seems to happen after a certain byte count for the xfer session is reached. I don't know about the Intel version of Tiger. My first and only MacIntel came with Leopard.

Thanks for the input, I did have thoughts of the Gigabit NIC card, I bought it new, I guess you get what you pay for... I will have a new much more expensive Intel card tomorrow to change with and see what's happen. I have moved files all day long and it drops the connection more often from the windows XP (2Gb RAM) machine than on my MacBook Pro 10.5 (3Gb RAM). I have several drops of the connection today this it is not acceptable. I hope it will be better with the NIC card from Intel. I will let you know how it turns out...

Thanks
Soren

I can tell you that when you get the thing setup proper, with hardware it likes, it will be rock solid. I have literally queued up terabytes and transferred it with out a hiccup.

Mike

I changed the NIC to an Intel card and now it is running well. I moved today 400GB of data and not a single drop of connection....
I will use Intel NIC card, that will be my standard from now on.

Thanks
Soren

Allot of issues with most transfers can be traced to cheap NICs. Glad you got it working and congrats, told you so!

Mike