Very slow access to SMB and AFP shares

[Natastrophe]

As much as I love my new M1 Macbook Air, one thing that it has huge issues with is accessing shares on my Qnap server. I've setup both SMB and AFP shares, and they are slow, disconnect all the time, and generally are a huge pain. Pretty much unusable at times.

My Windows 10 laptop has zero issues with the same Qnap server, so I know it's not my network. I have disabled IPv6, so am in IPv4 connection, yet still its slow.

Is there any way to speed it up or is this another bug? I have worked with macs professionally for many years, and always found their networking to be truly appalling, just thought they'd have resolved issues by now.

Any advice greatly received!

 

[opfor]

Same issue here, connecting to smb shares is slow in BigSur. Another laptop running Catalina connects to the same smb shares almost instantly. I have reported the issue to Apple but heard nothing back so far. Issue is still present in 11.3 beta 2.

 

[zorinlynx]

One thing I have found greatly improves SMB performance in MacOS is to make sure that the file:

/etc/nsmb.conf

contains the following:

[default]
signing_required=no

You don't need packet signing on your own home network, and it can slow things down. This disables it.

 

[opfor]

One thing I have found greatly improves SMB performance in MacOS is to make sure that the file:

/etc/nsmb.conf

contains the following:

[default]
signing_required=no

You don't need packet signing on your own home network, and it can slow things down. This disables it.

Hmm interesting, but it seems it does not apply to 10.13.4 or later. In any case, for me at least, it works fine in Catalina and is much slower in Big Sur, in the same network and server.

Turn off packet signing for SMB 2 and SMB 3 connections - Apple Support

Learn how to turn off packet signing on your Mac.

support.apple.com

 

[ksaro1]

As of High Sierra, I believe, Apple have implemented the latest, more stringent, security requirements of the SMB protocol. This has caused issues with 3rd Party SMB servers, such as connection and performance issues. I'm not sure about AFP though.

If you're just moving/copying files to/from NAS storage and the Mac, then I can suggest an FTP client, like Cyberduck or Filezilla. I find these work many times faster than using either SMB or AFP storage directly in Finder. I've copied multi-Gb files via an FTP client in seconds that take many minutes via Finder over SMB or AFP.

 

[Sciuriware]

I would have expected that Mac-to-Mac traffic would run optimal for ever?
Currently I'm stuck with Catalina (old hardware) and SMB connections are fast enough for me.
I rarely use Finder, but JAVA applications for transfers.
;JOOP!

 

[adrianstuartt]

anybody get anywhere with this? my intel big sur client (mba) only downloads at ~300mbit or 37mb/s, via wifi or wired from a server2012r2 box

no dice with the nsmb.conf here as well

 

[devguy]

Why did this thread die when obviously there are SMB issues going on (see the big "time machine backs up slow in SMB" thread). I doubt that these people having TM issues, are not also having general speed issues. In my case, I tried all the fixes mentioned:
1) Made the nsmb.conf file in /etc/ (since Big Sur doesnt make one by default) and added the "[default] signing_required=no" lines.
2) added the "var objects = fruit" line to the config in my Linux SMB server.
3) ran the terminal line: sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
4) restarded router

Nothing changed anything. My read and write are 10MB/s, even in FTP transers (whihc probably rule out an SMB specific issue). Im on an M1 Air on latest big sur using a raspberry pi 4 linux server with SMB and USB3 storage drives.

 

[devguy]

UPDATE: I switched from my router's 2G to the 5G connection, and it went up from 10MB/s R/W to 55MB/s W/R. This is nice and all, but there is still something wrong as my internet download speed is faster than that, and 5G wifi is supposed to be able to do 1GB/s. This means that it is not an issue with SMB, however. I did a perf3 test and get the same speeds. I will have to look into what it could be that limits my local network to 55MB/s.

To clarify why it doesnt make sense and something is still wrong, when on my 2.4gz wifi band, I can still download 60MB/s on a speed test, while my local network speed is 10MB/s, so something is afoot.

 

[Natastrophe]

Several Mac OS updates on, and performance seems to have improved a fair bit.

 

[haralds]

Slow SMB has always been an issue. It really kills TimeMachine performance.

 

[birmexer]

I'm getting the same issue between M1 Max MacBook and QNAP NAS over a Unify Network. What is weird is that this issue doesn't happen with slow transfer speeds if patched directly in with a network cable to the switch. It's specific to WiFi but the connection is reporting TX Rate of 1200mbps and copying to an old Apple Time Capsule is fast. It's just when copying to the QNAP NAS over WiFi. Have googled loads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it. :-/

I noticed that if I remote onto the QNAP drives webpage and upload the files through the browser they upload really quickly in comparison to using finder, so I know the WiFi is capable of transferring that amount of data quickly, it's just from Finder something is getting messed up!

 

[darkplayground]

I'm getting the same issue between M1 Max MacBook and QNAP NAS over a Unify Network. What is weird is that this issue doesn't happen with slow transfer speeds if patched directly in with a network cable to the switch. It's specific to WiFi but the connection is reporting TX Rate of 1200mbps and copying to an old Apple Time Capsule is fast. It's just when copying to the QNAP NAS over WiFi. Have googled loads and can't seem to get to the bottom of it. :-/

I noticed that if I remote onto the QNAP drives webpage and upload the files through the browser they upload really quickly in comparison to using finder, so I know the WiFi is capable of transferring that amount of data quickly, it's just from Finder something is getting messed up!

I'm having similar issues. I just upgraded my network to 10g to try and fix some of the speed issues but for some reason SMB seems to be really unreliable to my Synology NAS (which is think is very similar to QNAP devices). When running iperf3 from my M1 Max MBP I get sustained transfer of 9.9Gbit/s to the NAS but when copying files through finder or forklift to the SMB share, it caps out at 250MBps. I don't really understand why this is. I have 4 enterprise HDD disks and im able to sustain 1100MBps easily with the hardware but for some reason SMB on macOS is garbage. Sadly I don't have any other systems to test on but I was hoping someone would have some answers here.

Here is the SMBUtils iperf3 output:



I'm using a docker container on the Synology NAS with iperf3 server and running the client on my laptop to get those results.

Also if it helps I'm using a Synology DS3622xs+ with 1 of it's 10GB ports used. No link aggregation or anything.

p.p.s Time machine is also slow as hell, much slower than it should be

Thanks,
DPG

 

[Digll]

I'm having similar issues. I just upgraded my network to 10g to try and fix some of the speed issues but for some reason SMB seems to be really unreliable to my Synology NAS (which is think is very similar to QNAP devices). When running iperf3 from my M1 Max MBP I get sustained transfer of 9.9Gbit/s to the NAS but when copying files through finder or forklift to the SMB share, it caps out at 250MBps. I don't really understand why this is. I have 4 enterprise HDD disks and im able to sustain 1100MBps easily with the hardware but for some reason SMB on macOS is garbage. Sadly I don't have any other systems to test on but I was hoping someone would have some answers here.

Here is the SMBUtils iperf3 output:
View attachment 1936965
View attachment 1936966

I'm using a docker container on the Synology NAS with iperf3 server and running the client on my laptop to get those results.

Also if it helps I'm using a Synology DS3622xs+ with 1 of it's 10GB ports used. No link aggregation or anything.

p.p.s Time machine is also slow as hell, much slower than it should be

Thanks,
DPG

Were you able to find a solution to this. Same problems here. Smb and afp transfers are slower than the same connection used on wan. Getting maxed out Wi-Fi speed over 500Mbit and less than 80Mbit Mac to Mac transfer on LAN. Turned off smb signing etc.

 

[darkplayground]

After a doing a bunch of research it seems to be the encrypted share that's causing the issue. I purposely bought the ds3622xs+ because its had a hardware encryption module so I was hoping the encryption overhead would not be that severe but on encrypted shares I can't get much more than 250MBps. This is really frustrating because the resource monitor shows the NAS basically idle during the transfer so I wish there was some way to tell it to allocate more resources to the encryption process to speed it up. If I do an SMB copy to an unencrypted share on the same volume I get the full 1100MBps. Also reading from the encrypted share is full speed (~1100MBps), only the write operations are slowed down to 250.

Also, my first attempt at 10gb was really bad. The cables I was using were apparently broken some how. They showed a link and it appeared everything was working but my speeds were really really slow. I replaced the cables with a different more trusted brand and I was able to get max speed. I capped out at 6.5-7Gbps until I enabled jumbo frames on everything as well, that brought me up to 9.8-9.9Gbps fyi so I'd recommend doing that if your networking hardware supports it.

 

[Digll]

Were you able to find a solution to this. Same problems here. Smb and afp transfers are slower than the same connection used on wan. Getting maxed out Wi-Fi speed over 500Mbit and less than 80Mbit Mac to Mac transfer on LAN. Turned off smb signing etc.

Also I should note that this is a wired 10gbe network, and can’t even get close to that speed with the systems wired

 

[Digll]

Is there a way to force turning off encryption on LAN transfers since I’m behind a firewall? I’ve tried forcing the smp protocol to 1, 2 and 3 individually and the 3.0 gets the fastest speeds of…. 20MB / s and 1.0 getting 7MBs. Abysmal speeds

 

[darkplayground]

Also I should note that this is a wired 10gbe network, and can’t even get close to that speed with the systems wired

I would follow this guide to setup iperf3 on your Synology and run the command from your desktop to test your raw throughput to the nas. This is what I used to diagnose connectivity issues and figure out I had bad cables: https://ltroyalshrimp.com/how-to-run-a-local-iperf3-speed-test-server-on-synology-nas-in-docker/

Is there a way to force turning off encryption on LAN transfers since I’m behind a firewall? I’ve tried forcing the smp protocol to 1, 2 and 3 individually and the 3.0 gets the fastest speeds of…. 20MB / s and 1.0 getting 7MBs. Abysmal speeds

If you're on 10Gbe and getting those speeds something is very very wrong. If you have more than 1 disk in your NAS and no disk issues I would definitely look at your network configuration. Is your NAS plugged directly into your computer? or are there switches/routers in between? They all have to support 10gbe or it won't work. Try that iperf3 test and that will tell you if it's a network issue or an SMB issue.

 

[Digll]

I would follow this guide to setup iperf3 on your Synology and run the command from your desktop to test your raw throughput to the nas. This is what I used to diagnose connectivity issues and figure out I had bad cables: https://ltroyalshrimp.com/how-to-run-a-local-iperf3-speed-test-server-on-synology-nas-in-docker/


If you're on 10Gbe and getting those speeds something is very very wrong. If you have more than 1 disk in your NAS and no disk issues I would definitely look at your network configuration. Is your NAS plugged directly into your computer? or are there switches/routers in between? They all have to support 10gbe or it won't work. Try that iperf3 test and that will tell you if it's a network issue or an SMB issue.

This is Mac to Mac transfer via Wi-Fi and wired. I’m getting 500MB wired to NAS on any wired system, and 7MB via Wi-Fi. Any insight?

 

[darkplayground]

This is Mac to Mac transfer via Wi-Fi and wired. I’m getting 500MB wired to NAS on any wired system, and 7MB via Wi-Fi. Any insight?

Mac to Mac? Does this mean your NAS is connected to a Mac with USB or something? If so that's probably the problem. USB can be really really slow.

Edit: Just realized this is macrumors and not the Synology forum, I'm dumb. So this is probably a file share from 1 Mac to another Mac then, my bad. Yea I don't have any experience with that, but I would still try to use a tool like iperf3 to measure direct bandwidth between devices. This will let you know if it's a network bottleneck or an IO bottleneck or an issue with your service configuration.

 

[Digll]

No I mean finder transfer direct from an iMac to a MacBook Pro M1

 

[iPhoNewsRO]

i fixed my smb slow issues by adding smb encrypt = off in smb.conf on my linux server. now i'm R/W files at full gigabit speeds on macOS monteray

 

[spacestationidentity]

i fixed my smb slow issues by adding smb encrypt = off in smb.conf on my linux server. now i'm R/W files at full gigabit speeds on macOS monteray

I have a 2014 Mac mini (16gb ram, 1tb ssd) as a home server. When connecting to the server for the first time it takes so long to first load. Even tho I have it set to be on all the time and not sleep.

My windows SMB share is instant even on a normal HDD instead of ssd.

When accessing it from Files or FE File Explorer it just seems to take forever to connect to the Mac server

 

[madonnaragu]

My SMB connection is broken as well, and nothing seems to work. I can connect and read, but not write to it with my Mac.

 

[jeffmikey]

My SMB connection is broken as well, and nothing seems to work. I can connect and read, but not write to it with my Mac.

I had to force inherited permissions on all the shares. Even though the shared connection was through a user account that matched. In Monterey, the POSIX vs ACL wasn't getting applied properly on the server. There is some software that makes applying these terminal commands related to permissions easy. It's called TinkerTool.