Optimal config for NAS: swith or router?

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi,
I have a NAS at home and I’d like to accelerate the connectivity between my computer and the NAS as much as possible. My router is a 2011UiAS-2HnD.
What would be the best way to accelerate the communication between my computer and my NAS? Would it make sense to put configure a couple of ports on my router as switch instead of router?
Thanks in advance

2

What is the make and model of your NAS?

3

What is your NAS and actually what speeds do you get (by wifi and/or by cable)?

4

It’s a Synology DS213j NAS.

5

It’s a Synology DS213j NAS. I’m getting around 12MB/s (100Mbps) download speed connected by Ethernet. I am using ports Eth 2-5 Gigabit ports to physically connect both my computer and NAS (https://i.mt.lv/routerboard/files/Block-RB2011UAS-2HnD.pdf). It looks like I’m hitting a 100Mbps limit somewhere.
On the NAS side, the Eth port is supposed to be Gigabit capable (https://global.download.synology.com/download/Document/DataSheet/DiskStation/13-year/DS213j/Synology_DS213j_Data_Sheet_enu.pdf)
On my computer side, it is also Gigabit capable according to the specs (10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)) and manually configured to 1000Base-T.

Thanks!

6

In RB2011 only first five ports are Gigabit, rest is 100Mb. How is your NAS and PC connected? Second is traffic running thru switch chip? It looks like one of those two things

7

NAS on port Eth2. Computer on port Eth3, so both on Gigabit ports.
How can I check if traffic is going through switch chip? I believe my ports are not currently configured as switch. But how can I check?
Thanks a lot

8

You can also try the following Synology NAS optimization guide: http://blog.jeffcosta.com/2012/12/29/tuning-your-synology-nas-for-speed/
:smiley:

9

Check do you have “Master-port” and does other ports till eth5 connected to Master-port, below you got screen from my config in WinBox
masterport.PNG
On screen you see eth3 but all ports from 3 to 5 should have similar setup
There are two master ports because on this unit you got 2 switch chip’s and If you want to bridge both chip’s 1Gb and 100Mb then only software way (there is no wire connection between chip’s) so it will use CPU.

10

OK, so I checked and this is what I have:
Eth1: gateway, not slave. Master: none
Eth2 (NAS): slave. Master: none
Eth3 (PC): slave. Master: none
Eth4 (unused): slave. Master: none
Eth5: same as Eth4

My understanding is that none of these ports are configured in Switch mode. If they were, I would see the Master field pointing to another port among Eth1-5. Am I right?

Thanks again for your precious help.

11

Thanks Falklan. I tried modifying the TCP parameters proposed by this NAS optimization guide but throughput actually became lower and less stable. So I kept it as it was before.
Regarding the service disabling, my NAS doesn’t have the /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/ folder as proposed in the guide. So i couldn’t try that.

12

Here you have steps
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/rb2011-switch-port-groups/57854/1