Why is network sharing with android devices so slow using samba shares

I have found with Windows 10 that if I make a drive or directory available for use over a lan, using standard windows shares, and then try to copy a file to or from an android device, it is very slow, and at best I get 4 Mbits/second.

However, if I use http protocols, I get 40 Mbits/s i.e. ten times as fast! This increase relies on wifi direct rather than via main router. If I go via main router, I typical get 12-15 Mbits/s which is faster than samba sharing but still quite slow.

I now use an android app called "fast file transfer" instead of tools like ES file explorer as a result.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

What's the android device you are using -- is it a phone or a tablet --- if it's a phone are you using 3g / 4g or wifi.

Decent LAN connection should give you up to 1 Gib/s (you won't get that on HDD transfer in practice but you should easily be able to do around 400 Mib/s).

If you are over Wifi then max spec at 5GHZ is around 433 Mib/s - and that's HALF duplex so I'm surprised that your LAN is slower than wifi - also LAN is FULL duplex.

Remember also copying files to / from Android devices also requires protocol conversion as Android / Linux based systems have something like FUSE in the kernel to handle read / writes to NTFS file systems.

Confused here !!!

Cheers
jimbo

I have a gigabit lan and wifi around 150 Mb/s so assuming half, to get around 40 Mb/s allowing for software protocol is not too bad when using http protocols to transfer data but when I try to do standard Samba share copying it is painfully slow - it is not a hardware issue but an smb protocol issue.