Synology DiskStation DS1813+ Review

We are using a slightly different configuration than we have in most of our other networking articles – this means that these results today are not comparable to our other NAS reviews (except the RS3411XS and RS3411XS – which are priced at the ultra high end and were actually limited by our network). We are basing our network around two linked Belkin 1Gbit switches with 4x Gbit LAN connections to the NAS.

We are using three separate RAID 0 configurations across 6x1TB (3 x 2TB Raid 0) hard drives set into a 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation configuration. This enables multiple connections to be linked in parallel to increase the link speed beyond the limits of any one single cable or port and to increase the redundancy for higher availability.

Most implementations now conform to what used to be clause 43 of IEEE 802.3-2005 Ethernet standard, usually still referred to by its working group name of “IEEE 802.3ad”. The definition of link aggregation has since moved to a standalone IEEE 802.1AX standard.

We are opening 9 connections and copying 3 big files to each of the paired Raid 0 drive configurations. To try and mirror a business environment we set up three local machines with 120GB ADATA S511 SSD drives to ensure that no local drive limiting will be a problem. Each of these drives are transferring multiple files, back and forward.



The total bandwidth score is around 329 MB/s, a little short of the 352MB/s claims from the company. Still, these are very good results. The bandwidth is significantly lower than both RS3411XS and RS3412RPxs which achieved around 500 MB/s across the same network. It is worth pointing out that both RS3411XS and RS3412RPxs were hampered by our network at the time, however they were noticeably faster than the DS1813+ even under limited conditions.

We managed to achieve a total of 200 MB/s when writing to the RAID 0 drives. A very strong result.

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