Slow SMB share browsing on Mavericks

I have exactly the same issue.

Hoped it will be much better after upgrading and I'm very disappointed now...

I'm finding Mavericks access to Windows shares to be _considerably_ slower that they had been on Mountin Lion.. on the order of 2-3x slower.

I have found that Mavericks is slow at accessing Linux SMB shares, Windows 7 SMB shares appear to be OK.

I have both Ubuntu and CentOS SMB servers, both have the same slow access issues. I tried updating Samba on my Ubuntu machine to Samba4 and it made no difference to the speed (note that Samba4 is in Alpha).

As Windows uses similar versions of Samba that Mavericks is using (and has no issues) I'm picking it'll be an Apple update that solves this - especially considering it's 'slow' rather than 'not working'.

OK, they've updated SMB protocols with OS X 10.9 but nothing has change in terms of speed (or it's even worse). The problem is that it has been for many years that OS X is very slow at accessing smb files... I'm loosing hope they'll fix it soon.

I have SBS at work and it's realy frustraiting how the Mac works with it.

To follow up with some additional testing I found that this was only an issue through a wired adapter. I use an MBA and as soon as I flicked over to wireless I was getting the performance I'd expect from a wireless transfer to my samba servers (both CentOS and Ubuntu).

This will be my workaround for now.

Information on transferring files:

5GB file up to Ubuntu samba server...

Over wireless: about 10 minutes

Over wired currently: estimated at 8-12 hours

Over wired expected: about 4 minutes

Maybe an issue with the USB->Ethernet driver? My one is a 10/100 adapter.

This is true, I was useing an USB->Ethernet adapter.

I'll try today the wifi option you suggest and see if that helps.

Thanks

I have had the same issue I have the MBP connected through SMB to a server that my company VPNs and it populates the window so very slow working with files off the server is impossible. I called apple they ran a test to capture some data and told me they would get back to me in a couple days. I have delt with slow connections before using snow leopard with a NAS but his is unusable. Very frustrating. If there is something that i need to do I would i just need a solution. I have tried all the past solution i have read about today like the nsmb.cong file nothing, turning Internet sharing on nothing, using cfis:// nothing. The company I work for was planning on switching to all mac in the art department this was the test machine. I am the one that was pushing for it this really is disappointing I mean I love my mac I have been working with them for years i just started at this compnay and they were why behind in tech. I just hope something happens with this.

I have embarked on a testing mission... Using Wireshark I managed to see that packets were being dropped when transferring over the network - the same patterns didn't exist with the same transfer over wireless or the same transfer wired to a Windows server.

So I Googled a little and came up with the following command:

ping -c 1 -D -s 1500 smbserver

It basically pings the server with an MTU of 1500, to which I got:

ping: sendto: Message too long

Note that I also get this error on a Windows server - but what may be the issue is that when your software gets this response it is supposed to automatically decrease the MTU until it finds the optimal one for transfer of packets - something that Mavericks appears to be doing with Windows servers but not with Linux ones.

So using the ping command I can find an optimal MTU for transfer:

ping -c 1 -D -s 1320 smbserver

Now I get the answer:

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.829/0.829/0.829/0.000 ms

I had to mess around trying to find the optimal level but it gives you an idea on the test. After this I take my number and go to:

System Preferences -> Network -> USB Ethernet -> Advanced... -> Hardware -> Configure: Manually -> MTU Custom: 1320

After this, I disconnected my shares, re-established them and then tried another transfer up to my Linux server. Success! Granted it's not what I'd deem to be full speed, but to get a 5GB transfer down from 8 hours to 30 minutes seems better. It has taken it from completely unusable to tolerable.

I'm not entirely sure what the root of the problem is as I'm not a networking expert, as the stepping back of MTU appears to work on a Windows server and not a Linux one, and it worked fine in previous versions of OS X, my guess is that it is driver and/or stack related.

BTW I tried updating to 10.9.1 via the Developer download before trying this, the 10.9.1 upgrade didn't fix the issue for me before I went troubleshooting.

This saved my network!

My problem: I had to wait very long for the SMB shares to mount. I never had this issue with Mountain Lion or previous OS X versions. Note that the actual access speed once the shares were mounted was normal.

This manual setting of the maximum transmission unit was the key to getting things working again! I set mine to 1320.

Thank you so much. My mount problem has been solved by your post!

I am compelled to write a follow-up. While this solution did provide some improvements, I still have issues with mounting the drives.

It is very frustrating Apple, especially since you are moving away from AFP!

*sigh*

After I've exhausted all the options trying to find the fault at my NAS, I noticed the fast Windows 7 speeds, then I started looking at Mavericks.... ;( yeah, it's painfull ;(

I wonder if there are a developer build ready that might be looking at this?

I had a problem writing to the share as Mavericks uses SMB 2 (super slow on Mac, but not on windows)- I posted this in another thread:

I had this problem - trying to copy 65K files that were small - 500k or less each. Estimated time was 2 days (only 25gb of data total).

I found this link http://www.zdnet.com/mavericks-smb2-problem-and-fixes-7000022519/

And used the last solution - I unmounted the remote share and connected using CIFS - finder, Go , Connect to server then enter as cifs://server/share - now it says 30 minutes estimated time - I am on 1Gb wired connection - I thought it was an wireless issue, but no. It is a broken SMB2 implementation.