You bought a fast new NAS. You filled it with expensive SSDs. You have a powerful computer with an NVMe drive that boots in seconds. So why, when you copy a large video file from your NAS, does the speed max out around 110-115 MB/s?
It’s frustrating. You know your SSDs can read and write at 550 MB/s, maybe much more. It feels like you paid for a sports car but are stuck in neighborhood traffic.
The culprit probably isn’t your computer or your storage. It’s your network.
The 1GbE Speed Limit You’re Hitting Every Day
For the last two decades, the standard for most home and office networks has been 1 Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE). It’s been fantastic, reliable, and more than enough for streaming Netflix and browsing the web.
But it has a hard speed limit. A 1 Gigabit connection can, in a perfect world, transfer 125 Megabytes per second (MB/s). In reality, after accounting for network overhead, you’re lucky to get 115 MB/s.
Does that 115 MB/s number look familiar? It’s exactly where your file transfer speed is getting stuck.
Let’s put that in perspective:
- Your SATA SSD: Reads at ~550 MB/s (5x faster than your 1GbE network)
- Your NVMe M.2 Drive: Reads at ~3,000 MB/s (26x faster than your 1GbE network)
- Your 1GbE Network: Transfers at ~115 MB/s
Your network is the bottleneck. It’s a tiny pipe trying to carry a massive amount of data between your high-speed devices.
Why This Matters for Creatives and Prosumers
If you’re just sending emails, this bottleneck doesn’t matter. But if you’re a video editor, 3D artist, or data scientist, this bottleneck is killing your productivity.
Consider 4K video editing. A single stream of 4K ProRes 422 HQ footage requires about 94 MB/s. That means one video stream almost completely saturates your 1GbE connection. If you try to run a multi-cam sequence or pull other assets from the server, the network chokes. The result? Stuttering playback, dropped frames, and wasted time.
You’re forced to copy huge files locally, wait, edit, and then copy them back. This “offline” workflow is a direct result of the 1GbE bottleneck.
The Solution: How 10GbE Unlocks Your Hardware
This is where 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) changes the game. It is exactly what it sounds like: a network standard that is 10 times faster.
- 1GbE Speed: ~115 MB/s
- 10GbE Speed: ~1,000 MB/s (or 1 GB/s)
With a 10GbE network, your new speed limit is 1,000 MB/s. Now, let’s look at our hardware comparison again:
- Your SATA SSD: Reads at ~550 MB/s
- Your 10GbE Network: Transfers at ~1,000 MB/s
The bottleneck is gone. Your 10GbE network is now faster than your SATA SSDs, allowing them to run at their full native speed. You can comfortably edit 4K (and even 8K) footage directly from your NAS. Large file transfers that took 10 minutes now take one.
What Do You Need for 10GbE?
Moving to 10GbE is an ecosystem upgrade. The central piece is a 10G switch, which acts as the new, high-speed traffic controller for your network.
A “Web Smart” switch (like TRENDnet’s TEG-7124WS, for example) is a common choice for this, as it provides multiple 10G ports. These switches often come with two types of 10G ports:
1. RJ-45: These look like your standard Ethernet ports but are rated for 10G speeds (using Cat 6a or Cat 7 cables).
2. SFP+: These are slots for fiber optic or direct-attach copper (DAC) cables, often used for high-speed links to servers or other switches.
Beyond the switch, your NAS and your computer will also need 10G network interface cards (NICs). Many prosumer NAS devices now come with 10G ports or have a PCIe slot for an easy upgrade.
If you’re feeling stuck at 115 MB/s, stop blaming your storage. It’s time to look at your network.
