ReadyNAS Duo + DGND3300 - general poor performance!

[flamesong]

I've had my ReadyNAS Duo for about a month and my DGND3300 for nearly two weeks and performance has deteriorated steadily to the point where I just want to throw them from a railway bridge. It's lucky that they aren't in the same room as me...

Having discovered that after its automatic update as soon as I switched on on day one, the DGND3300 was incapable of reserving IP addresses, I downgraded to v .42 firmware, the IP reservation being essential for my system. That's all mentioned elsewhere.

I now find that the connection speed has dropped to something I was used to with a 32k modem and sometimes I have to manually reconnect every 10 minutes.

The ReadyNAS Duo cannot connect via ReadyNAS Remote - nobody on the forum has offered any advice on that. For some reason, it frequently fails to connect to my Time Machine volume and I have to reconfigure it and/or Time Machine. I never had that problem before the ReadyNAS Duo.

For these and countless other reasons, a day has not passed when I have not had to reboot, reset or re-install one or both pieces of equipment at least once. Today has been particularly bad with four attempts to get the two Netgear products talking to my MacBook Pro - I haven't dared try adding either my Samsung BD-C5500 or my iBlik RadioStation.

I have reconnected my old D-Link DSL-924 and it's as solid as a rock. Before buying the DGND3300, it had not been rebooted for about six months. If it wasn't for the desire to stream media, I would go back to using that. I've also had much better connection speed with an old Belkin G router at my place of work where we struggle to get any kind of speed due to being about 20 miles from an exchange and where the connection is shared with about six other people.

What is the problem at Netgear? As I mentioned in another thread, I contacted Netgear UK before buying my DGND3300 about the connection issues of the DGN3500. Despite an epic thread on Netgear's own forum about it, they denied any knowledge of the issue. I pointed this out and never heard from them again.

In fairly desperate need of a modem router which would serve my ReadyNAS Duo, I hoped that no such threads regarding the DGND3300 was a sign that it did not share the same problems.

I am really beginning to regret buying anything manufactured by Netgear. Would it hurt anybody to come onto the forum and say, 'Yes, there is a problem which we know about, we are working flat out to fix it and we are very sorry'? In fact, you don't even need to say 'sorry'. Just acknowledge that there is a problem and there is some hope that it may get sorted out before the next iteration of 802.11 is gnawing at out wallets.

Just for your information, Netgear, and apropos of nothing specific to this thread, I was so impressed with the claims of the ReadyNAS Duo, I mentioned it to the head of purchasing where I work. I pointed out that a number of them could replace a small fleet of desktop computers which have been acting as backup servers since long before I started there. He was equally impressed but suggested I report back with my own experience.

So underwhelmed am I feeling at the moment, I have thus far avoided the subject.

And is it necessary to have forums for different Netgear products to be divided by domain names? I am sick of hopping from one forum to another trying to find the source of problems which could originate in either product.

cc. forum1.netgear.com

[yoh-dah]

Sorry, the message is pretty long and I've try to understand -- the ReadyNAS Duo works OK with the DLink and not OK with the DGND3300? Have you tried replacing cables? Checked the ReadyNAS FrontView Network tab for errors? Tried connecting to the ReadyNAS directly from your Mac?

[PapaBear]

After reading the post, I am not sure whether you are complaining about the DGND-3300 and it's connection speed to the internet or it's connection speed to the Duo. It appears that your complaint is related to the modem/router and cropped up after a firmware upgrade.

As far as the Duo is concerned, if there is a question of the file transfer speeds, a direct connection between the Duo and a PC with a known good ethernet Cat5e or Cat6 cable will determine if the problem is in the Duo or the network.

[flamesong]

To address both responses to my post, I am not seeking support for the problems I am having, per se. They are discussed elsewhere. It is a general complaint that the Netgear products I have bought do not perform as claimed. In the UK we have the Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 which basically states that products should do exactly what the manufacturers claim. That notwithstanding, If I bought a brand new car and it had been claimed to 0-60 mph in 10 seconds, yet it did not reach 30 mph after two hours, the car manufacturer would be subject to multi-directional scrutiny. And if it had a feature which was supposed to remember every driver's preferred driving position and audio preferences, as some cars do, and this failed to function, it would be ridiculed by the likes of Clarkson, Hammond and May.

I am, by far, not the only person complaining about connection speeds and dropped connections. And it seems that the IP reservation problem is built into v.48 firmware.

One question is, what is this forum (and others hosted by Netgear) for if general malfunctions experienced by multiple users are ignored.

Other companies trawl Twitter looking for peoples' complaints and address them directly. Here, it appears that Netgear have simply provided a forum in the hope that other users will provide technical support so they need not bother.

But thanks for your suggestions. The problem is not the ethernet cable (why would Netgear provide substandard cables, anyway?). I tried changing it - but to test the logic of your suggestion, why would it be the ethernet cable if I was getting a solid, steady connection using the same cable but a different router?

And my settings, though not mentioned, are precisely as stated by my ISP. Everything else (apart from failed IP reservations) is as per factory defaults.

[PapaBear]

I was not suggesting that the cable was bad. My post about the direct connection is a standard phraseology that I use. The Duo is capable of up to about 20-25 MB/s file transfer. Now if copying a folder with a number of small files for example it will be less than that.

Since you stated that the problem with the connection was posted elsewhere, I looked for the post and possible responses. I did not find any. You 9 posts to date reflect folder deletion problems, dissatisfaction with the fact that the Duo does not automatically restart after a power failure and this thread. Maybe I am missing the thread where you discussed the modem/router problems with the Duo.

Also keep in mind that this forum is populated mostly by users of the ReadyNAS with just a few Netgear employees stopping by. Actually the forum pre-dates Netgear as it was started under Infrant. The Jedi Council members are employees and their login ID's are in red. Other employees are identified differently, but anyone with a category of member name (ReadyNAS) is just a customer/user similar to you. It's a forum of sharing help among ourselves.

[flamesong]

As I mentioned in the post, there is more than one Netgear forum. I put at the end of the original post: cc. forum1.netgear.com

[PapaBear]

Rather than expecting members of this forum to wade through another forum in search of your posts, it would have been far better to have posted a link to the thread.

Also keep in mind the ReadyNAS, while part of Netgear, is a totally separate product line. In fact, Netgear has another current line of NAS products, the Stora and a former line of NAS products that has been discontinued after the purchase of Infrant. This forum does not address those products either. We will discuss general problems with various routers, Netgear and others when used in connection with the NAS, but not detailed settings or configuration of the router itself. That is basically beyond the scope of this forum.

You are talking about two problems. One the "connection speed" and the other "reserved IP's". If you are attempting to use a fixed IP address, then set up a static IP address in Frontview on the Duo, but make sure that you get outside the normal range, but in the same subnet. For example my Netgear WNR2000 is using the subnet 192.168.1.xxx and starts with 001. My NVX's are set to 192.168.1.201 and 192.168.1.202 and my NV+ is set to 192.168.1.203. This is done in Frontview under the Network tab. Click on Network and then interfaces. Then at IP assignment you can use the assigned IP from the router or a static IP set on the NAS. If you have further problems doing this, then I suggest you open a post under the Installation and Upgrade topic area.

If you are having problems with file transfer speed between the Duo and network devices, then open a discussion related to that problem under the Hardware and Hardware Compatibility topic area. If it is connection speed to the internet, then a discussion in the other forum is appropriate.

[flamesong]

As reiterated in post #4, I am not seeking technical support on these issues in this forum. As I have stated twice earlier, they are being discussed elsewhere. This section is General > Feedback and that is what my post was about, giving general feedback about my feelings of feeling pretty much abandoned with two issues on two products manufactured by the same company which seems quite oblivious if not ambivalent about not inconsiderable clusters of people with the same problems.

If I wanted to discuss the technical issues I'd have posted them in the relevant sections, i.e. Support > Boot or Support > Installation and Upgrade or Support > Mac / OS X. Oh, look! I already did! And also on the other Netgear forum I mentioned.

But for your information, the IP reservation issue on the DGND3300 is one which everybody who has upgraded to v.48 firmware who wishes to use this feature has experienced, so please don't talk down to me like I'm somebody who just bought their first computer.

What is interesting is that nobody on either forum, despite a total view count of 120, has explained why Netgear seems so disinterested, though I have had private messages from other people who have expressed the same frustration.

[PapaBear]

I guess then with your experience you understand that this is a users help website not a technical support site. Technical support does not troll this site looking for customer issues. There is a specific website for that as well as telephone support (free for the first 90 days). You have not mentioned contacting technical support directly so I would be left with the impression that you have not. Since you don't seem interested in help, I a confused by your complaint about no response to your posts. I won't bother you with any more suggestions since you seem disinterested in solving the problem.

[flamesong]

So, what exactly is the feedback section for?

It states, 'Please post all that you want from a ReadyNAS here. Nothing guaranteed, but we'll certainly do our best if you make a good case for it.'

Are you telling me that members of the forum are sneaking into Netgear HQ when nobody is looking and making adjustments to ReadyNAS firmware?

[PapaBear]

So, what exactly is the feedback section for?

It states, 'Please post all that you want from a ReadyNAS here. Nothing guaranteed, but we'll certainly do our best if you make a good case for it.'

Most use it to request specific additions or enhancements to the hardware or firmware. Not non specific problems. If you had requested a specific enhancement, then it would be in the proper area. But after all these posts, I still don't know if you are having problems with file transfer speed or internet download speed. Just "poor performance". No on can act on something that general.

Are you telling me that members of the forum are sneaking into Netgear HQ when nobody is looking and making adjustments to ReadyNAS firmware?

I stated that no members of tech support troll this website. Some may come by on occasion. The Jedi do watch posts from time to time, and in fact the first response in this thread was by one. In fact the main one, but you never really responded back, so I am sure this thread is no longer on his watch list.

[dconnor]

Have you tried to check and replace your network cables? It is quite unusual for it to work on dlink and not on the dgnd. As far as Duo is concerned, you can check if the problem is with that or the network by getting a good Ethernet cable like a category 5 and doing a direct connection with the pc and duo.