Very slow file transfers over Samba shared folders.

[ptheofan]

Hi, I'm running Win7 on my Desktop and Ubuntu on my laptop. I have some folders here and there shared through the samba server. For the last 2-3 months I've been having speed issues. My transfers move at no more than 1.2MB/s!
Desktop is connected via LAN and the Laptop via WiFi (excellent signal). I would suspect my router, but recently friends of mine also came to notice speed reduction at their networks as well! Anyone has any idea what is going on?

 

[MU_Engineer]

Hi, I'm running Win7 on my Desktop and Ubuntu on my laptop. I have some folders here and there shared through the samba server. For the last 2-3 months I've been having speed issues. My transfers move at no more than 1.2MB/s!
Desktop is connected via LAN and the Laptop via WiFi (excellent signal). I would suspect my router, but recently friends of mine also came to notice speed reduction at their networks as well! Anyone has any idea what is going on?

There are two possibilities for the speed reduction.

1. If you are on 802.11g wireless, 1.2 MB/sec is a very typical transfer rate, particularly if you're not sitting right next to the router. Wireless delivers nowhere near its rated speed, and it just gets worse as you move farther away from the router and have other things like walls that degrade the signal.

2. Windows 7 and Vista don't play nearly as well with Samba as XP did for some reason unknown to me. I rarely see file transfer performance of more than a few MB/sec from my file server to a Windows Vista laptop despite all of them being on gigabit Ethernet. I solved that problem somewhat by using SFTP to transfer files from the server to the laptop. That was a sub-optimal solution as the laptop's CPU was pegged at 100% doing decryption, but the transfer speed at least went up to a more reasonable 25 MB/sec. For the record, the server can just about saturate the gigabit connection transferrring files over NFS.