Synology Presto Review

I still run my NAS in Switzerland while I'm living abroad in Singapore. I frequently run backups of for my files where I leverage my Switzerland NAS as an off-side backup location. After all, keeping my NAS in Switzerland is cheaper than the costs for international shipping from Switzerland to Singapore. But it comes with two draw-backs:
  • Average internet connection speed is still worse in Switzerland compared to other places, especially the upload speed
  • Latency is typically around 370ms, which unfortunately has a huge impact on file transfer speeds.
While the first issue can be solved with money, the second is more expensive. During some analysis on the topic, I found that Synology actually came up with an extension called Presto for their DSM. It's based on the somewhat mysterious technology called "SITA" which should solve the issue of high latency transfers.

According to their explanation on YouTube (video below), they are able to use the available bandwidth more efficiently than standard HTTP, SCP transfer methods. The theory in the YouTube video makes sense, but I still couldn't believe that Synology found a magic sauce to just fix it.
To figure out if it is true, I run a couple of tests between my workstation in Singapore and the NAS in Switzerland in direct mode (No VPN). The tools were tested
  • Chrome Browser Upload to DSM
  • Presto Client
  • WinSCP (SFTP)
  • WinSCP (SCP)
I couldn't believe that there is actually so much of a difference. Presto has outperformed all the competitors by at least 50% (11.61 Mb/s vs. 7.76 with Chrome)!


The actual upload speed might be even a bit higher as I observed some strange UI lags when uploading. Sometimes it took up to 15s until the Presto Task Manager listed the upload from the queue.
Task Manager can be expanded to a larger view
The only drawback is the hefty price. It ranges from $399 up to $6,999, depending on the bandwidth required.

Presto File Server License

Comments

  1. Thank you very much for writing this review. It was difficult for me to find reviews on Presto. I really appreciate your help. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not magic, just implementation UDP optimization discovered by Michelle Munson who formed Aspera, bought by IMB. She's now at eluv.io. Everyone uses it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's interesting @David. Thanks very much for adding! Found the following link on Wikipedia, which mentions FASP as protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspera_(company)

      Delete

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