Why is my Mac Studio 10GbE slow on incoming transfers?

I am have slow network speeds copying from an SMB share. Writing to the share gives me to 10gig speed.


I tried iperf3. With the mac studio as a client I am getting full 10gig speeds going to the server. Have the Mac Studio as the iperf server however I only get around 1gig speed.


Have tried different cables, creating an nsmb.conf file. Nothing changes it.


The server in question is TrueNAS Scale. These are the only two devices with 10gig.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Apr 2, 2025 6:29 AM

Reply
2 replies
Sort By: 

Apr 28, 2025 7:02 PM in response to jamesfromwoongarrah

10Gb Ethernet:

"energy efficient" drops power to the 10Gb Ethernet chip to save energy. It is NOT compatible with Top Speeds, and could cause issues with auto-speed. In the hardware pane, set Manual, then under Duplex, set: “Full-Duplex, Flow Control” NOT “Full-Duplex, Flow Control, power efficient” to disable power saving and boost top speed.


The Mac Studio has a 10Gb Ethernet port. This 10G Ethernet port is NOT compatible with speeds slower than ONE-Gigabit Ethernet. It is also NOT compatible with cables that have fewer than all four pairs available for data.


If you have some fancy equipment at the other end of the cable, it is possible it is trying to make a 10Gb connection. A 10Gb (or 5Gb or 2.5Gb) connection is only stable when cables are excellent and fairly short (like Category-6 rated cables under 100 feet). If either of those are not true, or you have you added patch cables that are not Category-6 rated, you could be seeing it connect at a faster-than-Gigabit speed, then error out and disconnect.


The setting [√] ABV/AEV mode selected on the hardware pane of advanced Wi-Fi Ethernet OR in your Router may constrain the connection in unexpected ways that could limit overall performance. The feature is used ONLY for prioritizing “live” camera video streams over Ethernet”.


Actual Speed:

The good way to check the actual connection speed USED to be Network Utility, But in Catalina and later, Apple has deprecated Network Utility and now you have to use a Terminal command to see your actual connection speed. First, you need to know what en number the link is. then you use a command like this one, substituting the actual en number.


my main Ethernet connection uses BSD name en2 (as shown in) :

 menu > about this Mac > (system report) > network:


Aquantia AQC107-B0:


Name: ethernet

Type: Ethernet Controller

Bus: PCI

Slot: Slot-3

Vendor ID: 0x1d6a

Device ID: 0x87b1

Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x1d6a

Subsystem ID: 0x0001

Revision ID: 0x0002

Link Width: x4

BSD name: en2

Kext name: AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtion.kext

Location: /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtion.kext

Version: 1.0.64


Terminal command:


ifconfig en2 | grep media


with this as my output for 10 Gigabit Ethernet:


media: 10Gbase-T <full-duplex,flow-control>

For ‘regular’ Gigabit Ethernet, you should get this instead:


media: 1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>


Errors detected:

To see if an Ethernet link is throwing more than a handful of initial errors, you can use Terminal command:


netstat -I en2


This is the resulting output. Counters are In-packets, In-errors, Out-packets, Out-Errors, Collisions. There should never be more than handful of errors from starting up, and in most cases, NONE.


Name       Mtu   Network       Address            Ipkts Ierrs    Opkts Oerrs  Coll

en2   8163  <Link#4>    00:01:d2:1a:00:dd   696697     0   484301     0     0

en2   8163  grantsmacpr fe80:4::461:ea0d:   696697     -   484301     -     -

en2   8163  192.168.0/23  192.168.0.204     696697     -   484301     -     -


Reading the top line, If the link were running beyond its ability to run and be stable, for example it auto-speeded to 10Gb but the cabling could only reliably support 2.5Gb, we would see non-zero errors counts, and errors increasing over time. (and possibly, disconnecting)

Reply

Why is my Mac Studio 10GbE slow on incoming transfers?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.