10/10/2025
Today’s adventure: fixing a NAS that decided to take a nap instead of working fast. 😅
My client, Dave, has a Synology DS923+ with a 10-Gig LAN card installed. But the problem? His Mac Studio was crawling at just 1-Gig, even slower speed.
So, I started digging. First, I gathered all the info, NAS setup, router details, home network map, basically everything that could be guilty.
And then I found it. The NAS 10-Gig port was connected to the router… which only supports 1-Gig. 💀 No wonder it was slow!
But Dave wanted full 10-Gig speed with his Mac Studio. So how do you get 10-Gig when your router is stuck at 1-Gig?
Here’s the trick 👇
The Mac Studio’s Ethernet port supports 10-Gig, and the NAS already has a 10-Gig card. So I asked him to connect them 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 NAS to Mac.
Done? Nope, not yet. 😎
The Mac still needed internet via Wi-Fi, and the NAS still had to talk to the rest of the home network.
So, I configured the NAS’s 1-Gig port to stay connected to the router (for home devices + internet) and set up a 𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝟭𝟬-𝗚𝗶𝗴 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 between NAS and Mac.
Then I created a unique IP range just for NAS↔Mac (no default gateway), tuned both MTUs to 𝗝𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗼 𝟵𝟬𝟬𝟬, and adjusted Mac’s network priority to prefer Ethernet.
And just when I thought we were done, I noticed… he was using a 𝗖𝗔𝗧 𝟱𝗲 cable, which capped the speed limit to 1Gig. 🙃
That’s a 1-Gig party cable. So I told him to switch to 𝗖𝗔𝗧 𝟲, we rebooted both NAS and Mac, and BOOM 💥 full 10-Gig speed unlocked.
Dave was happy, I was happier, and the NAS finally ran like it should.
He’s got a few more network gremlins I’ll be tackling soon, and I plan to upload the full live troubleshooting steps on YouTube.
Comment “𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱” if you’d like to see the step-by-step process!
Till then, stay curious, stay cool. 😎