Widescreen Gaming Forum

Anyone care to hazard a guess why my newly set up GbE network gives me shit-poor transfer rates? I'm getting far lower transfer rates on the supposedly gigabit network, than I was when using 10/100.

All network cards are GbE, the switch is GbE, the NAS drive the same and the cabling is Cat5e.

Out of some perverse amusement, I set the network card to 100mbps max, and I had transfer rates back in the 85% network utilisation again (albeit 100Mb network) rather than <2.5% on a Gb network.

The last thing I expected on a Gb setup was that copying 16GB of files would take 74 minutes. :evil:

I've been having the same headache for hmm, quite some months now.
The best I've gotten was a vista to vista transfer which seemed to work completely fine maxing out at the hdd's capacity (50-60mbytes/s).

So far the only things I've managed to improve are by messing with the TCP receive window and other misc. network settings that used to be for optimizing broadband internet connections.

See here for more details:
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/nethub/article.php/3485486

Unlike the article says, I haven't attained 900Mb/s, right now I'm at 10mbytes/s one way and 20mbytes/s the other.

Might try things like swaping cables and switching around things, like if you have a net router or anything else under 1gbit into the segment, remove em and see if what changes, if anything. Could be something as simple as a cable making the gbit traffic going through a 100mbit router.

In any case, good luck.

...the cabling is Cat5e...

... The last thing I expected on a Gb setup was that copying 16GB of files would take 74 minutes. :evil:

Switch to Cat6 to reduce the possibility of interference/crosstalk on the cables, for one thing.

Second, there's a lot of software and hardware that comes into play in a gigabit network... you might want to check the switch. Is it a switch or a hub? There is a huge difference. If it's a switch, all gigE connections to the hub should communicate at gigE with one another, if it's a hub (usually cheaper), they relay everything on every port to every active port minus the one received on, so a 100mbit link to say, the router, will cause you undue delay in your transfer as the gigE data is waited upon to be forwarded through the 100mbit to the router. Also, if you're using a router to control/split your connection inside your home, you CAN alter the MTU on your ethernet controllers past 1500, just push them all together, not one at a time, otherwise if you have one trying to talk at 5000 and the other still at 1500, it'll cause some interesting effects.

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Current build: Intel i5-4670k | 32GB DDR3 | RAID0 2x250GB 850EVOs | nVidia GTX980Ti (MSI G1 Gaming Edition) | SoundBlaster Zx | Dell 2405FPW (Landscape, primary) & HP w2338h (Portrait)

Check that your NIC drivers are updated. Unless they're older models, NIC card drivers can update fairly often. Then check that the firmware is updated on your modem. I just flashed mine and got a fairly good speed increase. Other than that always check with your ISP if you think it's nothing on your end hardware or software wise. I've had a few times where I called my ISP and they said they were doing repairs in my area.

It's not ISP related, so calling them is pointless. :)

OK. Borrowed some Cat6 from the oh-so-helpful guys and girls at computing services at work, and now have that hooking everything up.

NIC drivers are up-to-date too.

It's a switch, it's not a hub. If I get two things to talk to each other, the others have no input on the 'conversation' (I see no activity on the other devices)...

Tried setting IP addresses manually and removing any 10/100 devices from the switch (the printer and the internet router/firewall).

Nowt makes much difference. The Cat6 upped the PC-PC transfer rates about 1%, but had no impact on the NAS speeds. There are no firmware updates available for the NAS.

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Again, setting one device to 10/100 made network utilisation go back to the 'normal' regions for 100Mb networks. It just doesn't seem to like GbE for some reason.

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I'm annoyed by this, but it's not the end of the world when all is said and done. The piss-poor transfer rates to/from the NAS drive is the biggest irritant, believe it or not. I can deal with 30MB/s transfers between computers rather than 10MB/s I was getting on the 10/100 network, but 3.7MB/s to/from the NAS is just... painful.

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Anyone know of an ADSL modem/router that has wireless (G) and 8 wired Ethernet ports in it? I don't care if it's GbE, if it gives me less of a headache, it's worth the performance "deficit".

Paradigm Shifter,

You mentionned a nas, did you compare pc to nas vs pc to another pc see if its the same? I do know my synology nas is worse so far then pc to pc, over the same network equipment.

Also, you could try something like pcattcp to remove the hard drives from the variables, it uses ram instead to test the network.

see:http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/pcattcp.htm

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I'm annoyed by this, but it's not the end of the world when all is said and done. The piss-poor transfer rates to/from the NAS drive is the biggest irritant, believe it or not. I can deal with 30MB/s transfers between computers rather than 10MB/s I was getting on the 10/100 network, but 3.7MB/s to/from the NAS is just... painful.

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Anyone know of an ADSL modem/router that has wireless (G) and 8 wired Ethernet ports in it? I don't care if it's GbE, if it gives me less of a headache, it's worth the performance "deficit".

First, the NAS, is it a computer running FreeNAS? Or is it actual NAS hardware/software?

Second, the best you'll get is 30MB/s transfers between computers, that's the harddrive max throughput on most SATA drives man, unless you switch EVERYTHING to Ultra320 SCSI, you're not going to EVER be seeing higher than around 35MB/sec (Burst)... I get 30-35 transfer disc to disc in my computer. Be glad at last now, you're not limited by the 100mbit cap on the lines, and your computers can swap at full SATA2 (300mbit) speeds.



Third, Do not get gateways (Modem&Router combos), that's a completely retarded thing to do. Most times they're shittier than even the shittiest networking components at Frys.com (and trust me, Fry's sells some pretty shitty networking equipment.)

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Current build: Intel i5-4670k | 32GB DDR3 | RAID0 2x250GB 850EVOs | nVidia GTX980Ti (MSI G1 Gaming Edition) | SoundBlaster Zx | Dell 2405FPW (Landscape, primary) & HP w2338h (Portrait)

Mesh, yes, PC to PC is about as fast as it's gonna get, I think. Approaching HDD max transfer rates, anyway. I am interested in why PC to PC the transfer speeds vary so much (up and down like a bloody yoyo).

The NAS is a Western Digital MyBook World Edition 1TB (single drive).

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OK, what Cyna said makes sense. Wasn't thinking completely, obviously. Doesn't explain the NAS speed, but makes me slightly less GRRR. ;)

And this is why I love this forum. :D

Thanks guys. :D

Mesh, yes, PC to PC is about as fast as it's gonna get, I think. Approaching HDD max transfer rates, anyway. I am interested in why PC to PC the transfer speeds vary so much (up and down like a bloody yoyo).

The NAS is a Western Digital MyBook World Edition 1TB (single drive).

...

OK, what Cyna said makes sense. Wasn't thinking completely, obviously. Doesn't explain the NAS speed, but makes me slightly less GRRR. ;)

And this is why I love this forum. :D

Thanks guys. :D

First, yes, PC to PC is as good as it will get.

Second, they vary badly because of fragmentation, HDDs work best when the data is written in a line, not strewn across the HDD, so defrag more regularly.

Third, that NAS only has a 100mbit NIC as far as I know, you'd be better off connecting it via USB2 (480mbit [57.22MB/sec]) to one of your GigE equipped computers for best transfer rates. Oh, and 1TB drives, have horrible Random Access times, and it's likely you're writing a bunch of little files to that thing, so, yeah, you're likely to be experiencing the bad access times, as well as fragmentation layered on top. I never use an external drive for small files, that's what USB thumb drives are for since they use flash memory and are far better for Random Access reading. Use the NAS for large files, I use mine for HD movies, and my USB 250 I use for local HD storage as well.

Fourth, thank you for at least listening to me. Some people would have ignored me, even though I was explaining what the hell was going on.

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Current build: Intel i5-4670k | 32GB DDR3 | RAID0 2x250GB 850EVOs | nVidia GTX980Ti (MSI G1 Gaming Edition) | SoundBlaster Zx | Dell 2405FPW (Landscape, primary) & HP w2338h (Portrait)

On your third point, Cyna... that NAS was advertised as a gigabit ethernet connection, and it's ethernet only... it reports 1000Mbps in the speeds and various setup pages, so I have no reason to believe it isn't. If the random access times are that poor... ouch. Oh well. To be honest, once it's full of stuff, I'll only be reading files off it occasionally. Obviously I'm just destined to get annoyed at how long it takes to write to. ;)