Slow Transfers QNAP NAS on a Gigabit Network

For several months or possibly years transfer rates from my QNAP nas TS-231 have been very slow about 12.5MBps to 15MBps (that's megabytes per second). I have a gigabit network and transfer rates should be above 50MBps.

I won't go in to all the ridiculous things I tried based on other people having the same issue, here is what fixed mine:

After opening a ticket with qnap 2 months ago and dealing with their SLOW response times I finally got a resolution to my problem.

The last thing they asked me to do was to disable server signing. No explanation of what exactly they were referring to, no information on where to find this setting. nothing useful.

I spent a couple of hours googling how to disable server signing on a qnap with nothing useful being found. I tried editing the smb.conf (this appears to be where the setting is), but the qnap changed my settings back upon a reboot of the server.

after much more googling I kept finding references to server signing with windows, which led me to try something.

My qnap was set as an Active directory domain controller, I did that because I kept having problems getting access to my own files.

I turned off AD domain controller and of course that broke access to my files.

I also had to disable Windows ACL support since I could not access my files, take ownership of them or anything, I enabled Advanced Folder Permissions.

I did manage to join the qnap to the domain, something that never worked before. I do not know why it is working now.

I was then able to set permissions of my files in the qnap webpage and finally access them.

I noted that server signing is now disabled in the smb.conf file (not by me).

I tested copying files and wow look at that transfer rates of about 60MBps.

It only took over 2 months and countless hours googling the issue. Was it server signing? was it my qnap being a domain controller? not sure but it's working now.