MacOS connect to NAS very slow

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MacOS connect to NAS very slow

my MBP 14" navigating my NAS is very slow. my USB 3.0 5TB Seagate HDD is connected to my router as a SAMBA drive. having this setup for two years. it's no problem with my MBA M1.

but when I recently moved to MBP 14", the file navigation is very slow. streaming video very chunky, sometimes not even start. how do I troubleshoot?

I put MBP 14" and MBA M1 side by side with same account, same setting I can totally see the difference. MBP 14" is much slower and chunky.

the USB 3.0 drive I think is exFAT file format, not sure if it matter.

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 12.0

Posted on Nov 19, 2021 6:48 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Shower999 Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 20, 2021 3:47 AM in response to James Brickley

hi,

I want to thanks for the help earlier.

just want to tell I already found the root cause and resolve the problem.

the root cause was I'm using the AiMesh ASUS ZenWifi CT8 router that have two nodes.

the for some reasons, the secondary nodes is getting bad signal for no reasons and slow down the Mac.

since the signal is weak, Mac is having hard time to get high speed data from the NAS drive.

and the MBA M1 is actually connecting to the primary Nodes despite it is placing side by side to my MBP 14:

after I found this root cause. I place the second node closer to primary nodes and restarted few times.

but the only solution is to reset the secondary nodes.

after resetting secondary nodes, the signal recovered and I have change nothing physically.

Signal is now great and everything is back to normal

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Answer 2

Nov 19, 2021 7:18 PM in response to Shower999

The file may not exist and you'll be creating it.

Open Terminal via /Applications/Utilities/Terminal
Type in Terminal "sudo nano /etc/nsmb.conf" without the quotes and press Return
Enter your Mac password and press Return (you won't see the cursor move)
Type in the following:

[default]
protocol_vers_map=2

Press CTRL+X to exit and you will see:

Save modified buffer (ANSWERING "No" WILL DESTROY CHANGES) ?
 Y Yes
 N No        ^C Cancel

Type Y to answer Yes to write the changes to the file:

File Name to Write: /etc/nsmb.conf

Press Return to write the file and you'll be back to the Terminal prompt and you can type exit and press Return then quit the Terminal window.

Test out your network share, try rebooting and testing again.

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Answer 3

Nov 19, 2021 7:08 PM in response to Shower999

What router do you have and I assume the router is providing SMB/CIFS SAMBA to share the external USB 3.0 5TB exFAT hard drive? If this is what you mean when you say NAS then the SAMBA implementation in the router may require an update. Have you checked the firmware on the router and that it is the latest version?

If that doesn't fix the problem, you might want to configure Monterey's SMB to use SMB version 2 instead of 3 which is the default SMB in Monterey. Edit the /etc/nsmb.conf by opening Terminal and typing "sudo nano /etc/nsmb.conf"

[default]
protocol_vers_map=2

You might need to reboot after you configure this file.

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Answer 4

Shower999 Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 19, 2021 7:11 PM in response to James Brickley

I'm using ASUS AiMesh CT8 router. last time the latest firmware had problem and I had to revert to an earlier version advised by ASUS so I stopped updated firmware 2 years since.

I'm not familiar on /etc/nsmb.conf. can you tell me more detail step by step? can't seems to find that file in finder

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Answer 5

Shower999 Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 19, 2021 7:20 PM in response to James Brickley

I followed your step

I opened Terminal and typing "sudo nano /etc/nsmb.conf"

password

than I typed these 2 lines

[default]

protocol_vers_map=2

I used keyboard ^O to WriteOut

I used keyboard ^T to To file

reboot, and doesn't seems like change.

is that the right step?

how do I know if I'm on SMB 2.0 already?

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Answer 6

Nov 19, 2021 7:21 PM in response to Shower999

I would still check for updates on the router, it must be far newer on the version. Sometimes a manufacturer may have a bug in their firmware and you might need to revert but that would be extremely rare. Chances are you had to revert only temporarily until ASUS fixed whatever glitch there was at the time. The latest router firmware version should contain many fixes. I would highly recommend upgrading the firmware. If they added SMB3 to their router it will fix the problem without needing to edit this file on each Monterey system.

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Answer 7

Nov 19, 2021 7:22 PM in response to Shower999

It depends on what version of SMB the router implemented. Try updating your firmware on the router.

To undo the SM2 setting you would delete the /etc/nsmb.conf file like this in Terminal:

sudo rm /etc/nsmb.conf

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Answer 8

Shower999 Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 20, 2021 2:06 AM in response to James Brickley

I have played with the MBP 14" whole day

bad news is, updating router firmware doesn't change anything. it's still choppy as ****.

good news is I found the root cause. it's the 5G network band. when I connect to the 2.4G band wifi network on the same router. it become Butterly smooth. just like my MBA M1. btw the MBA M1 is connecting to the same 5G network band without any issue. only the MBP 14" connecting to this 5G network wifi got problem

I tried to forget my 5G network in my MBP 14", still the same.

I feel like website loading is slower too on the 5G network.

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Answer 9

Nov 20, 2021 5:53 AM in response to Shower999

Congratulations on your trouble-shooting skills, well done! That makes a lot of sense. Most of the time issues with SMB shares being slow with Mac's involve older SAMBA servers that haven't been updated to support SMB3 or haven't been tuned for Apple devices (vfs_fruit options). You didn't mention you had multiple access points extending the range of your WiFi network. As the ASUS is at least 3 years old you might consider upgrading your WiFi solution to something that uses Mesh networking and WiFi 6. Mesh networks handle the hand-off between access points much better.

The Amazon EERO products are rather excellent for home environments. A mobile App makes it simple to setup and a starter kit comes with a base and two extenders. Several of my customers have greatly benefited by switching over to EERO Mesh WiFi 6, achieving vast improvements to their home WiFi coverage, speed, and reliability. You might also benefit from a NAS that has at least two or more disks and the Synology or QNAP brands are excellent. As are any of the FreeNAS / TrueNAS devices.

The next level up would be something like Ubiquiti's UniFi products which scale a network from small to enormous and offers much more but requires more networking knowledge.

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