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We compiled samba 3.6.6 to see if the new smb2 protocol could enhance transfer speeds

I used a file of 330 MB and used windows 7 that has smb2 support. samba 3.6.6 was running on a nwsp2
Also a compariosn was made with the current version of samba (3.0.24) as present in our firmware on this moment.

The results with samba 3.6.6:
With samba 3.6.6 running indeed smb2 is faster then smb1 protocol in write and read, about 20%
The graph below shows network performance using samba 3.6.6 while writing the file to the nwsp2
The last part of the graph is a writing a file to the nwsp2 with smb2, the first two hills are the same file with smb1.
You can see it smb2 hill is about 20% higher and finish in a shorter time.
Vertical is % of max speed of the connection (1 gigabit/s connection), horizontal is time.


Comparison with samba 3.0.24 performance
The bad news is that samba 3.6.6 with smb1 protocol is much slower then samba 3.0.24. Samba 3.0.24 has only smb1.
It appears that smb1 with samba 3.0.24 is even faster then samba 3.6.6 using smb2
In the graph below you can see network performance using smb 3.0.24 and writing the same file to the nwsp2 (first hill) and reading the same file (second hill). You can see it that the max speed is higher then samba 3.6.6 with smb2 in previous graph. Also it finish in shorter time proofing that data transfer is faster



conclusion
It makes no sense to implement samba 3.6.6 with smb2 support to enhance transfer speeds. Clients not having smb2 capability will even loose performance and with smb2 the performance also not match the current speed with samba 3.0.24 and smb1.
The most likely reason why we do not get a performance improvement is that the cpu and memory speed of the nwsp2 are the limiting factor. The binaries (executables) of samba 3.6.6. are much much bigger then those of samba 3.0.24 and ask for more cpu time and memory which go onto account of performance. Apperently this effect is bigger then the gain of the new smb2 protocol. Although the nwsp has 256 MB of RAM and a 800 mhz processor its is still not a strong computer. I will see if the size of samba 3.6.6 can be reduced by leaving out not required options and if this then brings improvement or not.

Nice work there!

Hi all,

Thanks a lot for investigating in the update of Samba.
For my part I am eagerly looking for an update as I assume that Samba is the limiting factor in my firmware 12.1 still.
My environment:
- 2 Laptops using Windows 7 Pro (private only, no DOMAIN Account)
- 1 laptop using Windows 7 Enterprise (business laptop with partly private use, WITH DOMAIN Account)

My 2 private laptops work really fine. From them I can access the NAS Box via its hostname (i.e. "\\mynas\music").
But: from the business laptop on which I work also during private time, I can only access the NAS by connecting with its absolute IP address (i.e. "\\192.168.100.2\music").
Windows cannot be spoofed to use the network name in explorer, even though it can resolve the name (checked by using "ping mynas" which perfectly answers). Explorer sometimes (only on first connects) rejects the connect to some rights limitations. Once I change the access to absolute IP, no claims from Windows anymore.
I even modified the /etc/hosts in Windows and added "192.168.100.2 mynas" -> it simply doesn't help.
The bad thing as you know - once you move your box to another address you can change all the config files, shares, itunes libraries, ...

As this business laptop still has to work in business environment I do not want to patch any registry related stuff of course.
I would have expected to have it working right out of the box.

I would therefore assume that this is something related to SMB2 and needs a Samba update on the nas box - is that true?

Otherway around: any help available for the environment mentioned above to get this working seamlessly with firmware 12.1 or even (when I upgrade) 13.0 without the need of upgrading Samba?

Another question: did you preserve the change to allow umlauts in passwords that you added in 12.1 by my request for all subsequent releases? Or do I have to patch manually?

Thanks for all your efforts again!

Hi mamboman

mamboman wrote:Another question: did you preserve the change to allow umlauts in passwords that you added in 12.1 by my request for all subsequent releases? Or do I have to patch manually?
Thanks for all your efforts again!

Yes and no.

With version13.0 more special chars are now authorized but not yet the char encoded in utf8. So today only these chars:
a-z ; A-Z ; 0-9 ; ! ; % ; # ; ~ ; _ ; / ; ^ ; [ ; ] ; @ ; $ ; (space) ; . ; + ; - (ndr : not ";" of course)

The webinterface uses basic authentication and it doesn't support password with uft8 encoded chars like éèëäà... They are also some problems with the FTP server.

I think a samba upgrade will not help you to solve the issue with you business laptop.
Samba is just a file server. Networking and DNS has nothing to to do with samba

In the next release we will upgrade samba to 3.0.37, but not to 3.6.6 because of reasons described earlier

Hi,

please have a look at the security dialog attached.
This is something related to Samba as far as I could read in forums in the net - something which has changed in the trust relationships and the new SMB protocol introduced with newer Windows version.
Why this does not popup with IP adressing - I really have no clue.

On my system, windows 7,this happens if you try to open a samba share on your NAS with windows and the user under which you logged in under windows has no access to the shared folder. No difference if I use IP our network name

No, there is no change in the user. The user is always a domain user.
a) accessing the NAS with absolute IP address: no problem at all.
b) accessing the same NAS with the network name: the security dialog appears.
Of course I can only set the username not the domain name in Samba.

Accessing the NAS with non-domain users works flawlessly - no matter whether I try with network name or by absolute IP. It always works.
This makes me feel it's a problem related to SMB.

sorry mamboman but I don't know why this is happening :dontknow

Maybe because the nas is not part of the domain ? ( I have no knowledge on "domains" )