100 Mbps network not near 100 Mbps

I have two PCs (one XP and one NT) with Linksys 10/100 Eatherfast cards set to run at 100 Mbps, connected with a SMG 10/100 router, using CAT 5, and running file and print sharing over NetBEUI (for the XP PC I had to retrieve NetBEUI from the XP disc). When the computers are basically idle, I cannot achieve over 34 Mbps when transferring a file. In about the fatest test run, a 220 MB zip file took about 65 seconds to transfer.

I even tried bypassing the router with a crossover cable, which resulted in near identical results.

When I called Linksys, the person said they don't provide support for peer to peer networks.

Thanks for any help,
Adam

Check your cabling for kinks, sharp bends (near 90 degree) or any nearby interference (i.e. power cords, flourescent lights, etc.) and check the ends where the cable terminates in the RJ-45 connector. Also inspect the network cards and router ports for any possible wear and tear or damage. Don't extend the cables any longer than 290ft (realistically 300 ft, but I factor in a tolerance). Also check the drivers on the netcards and router. Hope this helps.

If I'm not mistaken, some of your confusion may come from the bits/bytes issue. Ethernet is measured in megabits of information, and windows organizes things in bytes (8 bits) Doing the math, that would mean your transfer of that file averaged about 27.1 megabits per second. You can use bandwidth monitors to check the speed of your network, and i can tell you that my 5 node switched/routed network at home gives similar transfer rates. I've never botherd to ask why though, the average would be so far below the theoretical maximum. I realize there are overhead and latency issues, but can honeslty say i've never seen more than say 60% of the 100mbps speed anywhere.

You also have to add header information to each packet. I'm too lazy to look up size but you've got another header on each layer of the iso.

Configure the NIC cards to use Full 100 base Duplex

Make usre its not on Hardware Defualt or Auto Select

Also try uninstalling the tcp/ip protocol then reinstalling it

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by AKautz:
<strong>I have two PCs (one XP and one NT) with Linksys 10/100 Eatherfast cards set to run at 100 Mbps, connected with a SMG 10/100 router, using CAT 5, and running file and print sharing over NetBEUI (for the XP PC I had to retrieve NetBEUI from the XP disc). When the computers are basically idle, I cannot achieve over 34 Mbps when transferring a file. In about the fatest test run, a 220 MB zip file took about 65 seconds to transfer.

I even tried bypassing the router with a crossover cable, which resulted in near identical results.

When I called Linksys, the person said they don't provide support for peer to peer networks.

Thanks for any help,
Adam</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have a very simple explanation for the issue. It's a bottleneck on the hard drive transfer speed. your sending your file at 34 mbps/sec, would that not be the transfer speed of the average IDE drive?

The MEDIA can take the 100mbps, but your just not able to put the info on it that quickly because of the slower hard disk.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Fierce:
<strong>Check your cabling for kinks, sharp bends (near 90 degree) or any nearby interference (i.e. power cords, flourescent lights, etc.) and check the ends where the cable terminates in the RJ-45 connector. Also inspect the network cards and router ports for any possible wear and tear or damage. Don't extend the cables any longer than 290ft (realistically 300 ft, but I factor in a tolerance). Also check the drivers on the netcards and router. Hope this helps.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">All that makes me amazed my home LAN actually works :rolleyes:

Also, you got bus mastering NICs or standard ones?

If the former, you can write direct to memory, otherwise you can be restricted by whatever else the CPUs on the machines are doing, this will slow it down, especially with lots of small files.

Also, did you test it with lots of small files, or one big file? One big file is better, preferably something binary, like an ISO.

ps. My network with Two D-link 520TX+ (bus mastering) and a Netgear RP114 router often peaks at 50ish MB/s (theoretical max is 87.5MB/s including tx of extra info)

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Matridom:
<strong>I have a very simple explanation for the issue. It's a bottleneck on the hard drive transfer speed. your sending your file at 34 mbps/sec, would that not be the transfer speed of the average IDE drive?

The MEDIA can take the 100mbps, but your just not able to put the info on it that quickly because of the slower hard disk.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Agreed.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. In response,

Fierce,
While I did notice two nice kinks in the 100' Cat 5, it does not appear to have affected data transmission speed, because it performed nearly identical to a 25 ft. crossover cable. As far as wear and tear goes, both NICs are less than two years in use and in my opinion have been treated delicately. In regards to the drivers, the one on my XP machine has a newer date (a few months newer) than the one listed on the web site. In fact, after downloading the zipped driver file from Linksys.com, I don't see any driver specifically for Windows XP listed. The closest match I see is a Win 2k driver, so I think I will stick with what I have.

Ahcoraj,
At this point, I'd be satisfied with 60% of 100 Mbps, as it would be about twice as fast as I am running now.

iateyourcat,
I don't think header info could account for the majority of the lack of speed I am experienncing.

AM Daemon,
Cards are set to use only 100Base TX Full Duplex. Also, how could reinstalling TCP/IP help, since I am transferring using NetBEUI?

Matridom,
Nice suggestion. Using two hard disks in the XP machine, transferring the file from one hard disk to the hard disk that was used in the previous trials resulted in a transfer speed of approximately 5.37 Mb per second, more than a 50% improvement. Never the less, I was kind of surprised at the results; I thought the IDE bus was faster than that. It makes me wonder, what type of system would one have to own in order to make any use of a gigabit NIC?

Feet,
The Linsys Etherfast 10/100 NIC does support bus mastering. However, even if it did not support bus mastering, if the CPU was relatively idle, would bus mastering make that much of a performance difference? BTW, I tested the transfer with one 220 MB ZIP file.

Thanks for all the thought provoking feedback!

Adam

How much memory do you have avail and how much is used? If you have plenty of avail RAM you could create 2 identical RAM disks and copy the file over the network eliminating the IDE bus completely.

Are you coping the file using drag and drop or from the DOS prompt?

Create 2 boot disks with DOS, NIC drivers and MS networking files (try bootdisk.com or send me some mail for a disk) then rn your test from DOS. Try it again with a RAM drive and graph the diference.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by AKautz:
<strong>Feet,
The Linsys Etherfast 10/100 NIC does support bus mastering. However, even if it did not support bus mastering, if the CPU was relatively idle, would bus mastering make that much of a performance difference? BTW, I tested the transfer with one 220 MB ZIP file.
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">1) Erm, to a certain extent, yes, but it would still be faster (i'm not even going to think about how much)
2) Cool

Yeah, HDD transfer maybe, i not got the figures to hand, but t'other day i transfered 1.4Gb between PCs and it was done by the time i'd had a pi$$, so that's about what? max of 30s? That's at least 23Mb/s and prolly more.

I'm gonna go take a look at what kinda speeds i can get and get back to you

Feet starts looking around for a nice little util to test his bandwidth with - ideas?

cyberhh,
I'm running with about 384 MB of Crucial PC133 SDRAM with about 225 MB in use at the time I transferred the 220 MB file via Explorer, cut and paste.
I like the RAM disk idea a lot, but I don't know how to go about getting DOS drivers for my Linksys NICs; I don't see anything listed at the Linksys site. Any suggestions?

Feet,
Looking forward to your test results. In regards to the time it took for the 1.4 Gb transfer you mentioned, I think I average about 90 seconds (including hand washing of course). Either way, that's much faster than my setup. In fact, it's much faster than my hard drive can transfer to another hard drive on the IDE bus that I have. What is your bus rated at?Are your D-Link NICs 1000 Mbps NICs?

Eliminate the hardware by using the diagnostic tools on the linksys disks.

then

do the workstations have IPs. ping one from the other and see what the times are.

typical pinging should be 120 ms.

I sort of agree with the IDE but not really though, there is enough of a buffer and cache for that.