SMB – Fix Slow File Transfer from Ubuntu 18.04 to Synology 718+

file-transfersambasynologyubuntu-18.04

I have Synology DS718+, which I am testing with one user (myself) currently.

My transfer rates from my laptop to Synology of around 2 MB/s.
However copying FROM Synology back to laptop is around 30 MB/s! – therefore I am ruling network issues out.

Synology is connected directly to a router (1000Mbps) with a cat6 cable. Also in the control panel the interface setting show 1000Mbps, full duplex. Laptop is connecting using WiFi, so I don't expect 1GB, but 2MB is a bit extreme.

My laptop is Ubuntu 18.04, interface set to 1000Mb.

SMB is enabled with SMB2 to SMB3.
If I disable SMB Transport Encryption Mode I SOMETIMES get to whooping 3 MB/s

I am about 5m from the router, no walls etc. in the way.

EDIT:

As per Freddy's suggestion (thanks Freddy) I tried different file sizes – always looks similar. However I noticed the speed is increasing very slowly – this can be seen clearly when copying larger file, i.e. 3GB. The file started as always at 2MB and by the end of the copying process transfer rate was ~7.5 MB.

Transfer rates over FTP are exactly the same – very slow copying to Synology and 10-12x faster copying from.

Best Answer

Resolved. It should have been posted on askubuntu, but I didn't know at the time of posting...

Long story short, it was my laptop. I upgraded the kernel from 4.15 generic to 4.20 - that's it. I suspect my WiFi card (Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174) doesn't work well on the factory kernel.

How did I get there:

I started testing with another laptop with W10, which was working very well. So I knew it was not network/SMB config/Synology. So I was trying to set up manual network negotiation mode between my ubuntu laptop and Synology, but I realized my wifi card doesn't give me a lot of configuration options. For example this is what ethtool shows for my card: 

$ sudo ethtool wlp2s0
Settings for wlp2s0:
        Link detected: yes

Also dmesg was showing some failures, which unfortunately I don't have to paste anymore.

I started looking for a better driver and ended up installing ukuu and upgrading kernel. Initially I installed 4.20, which worked perfectly, but I had to downgrade to 4.18, because 4.20 has problems with DisplayLink/Evdi, which I use as well. But I confirm that 4.18+ fixes the issue.

Hope this helps somebody.

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