I'm trying to transfer some large files between two computers connected through GbE. Transfer speeds are dismal. I'm getting like 15% utilization max, sometimes much lower. As far as I can figure, that is only sustained transfer rate of maybe 18MB/s. These hard drives can sustain at least 2 maybe 3 times that. The CPU isn't being utilized anywhere near 100% either. What the heck is up?
-
We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.
2 Gigabit Cards, Gigabit Switch, SLOW TRANSFERS
- Thread starter Penth
- Start date
imported_Kensai
Lifer
System specs?
Firewall mayubeh?
Firewall mayubeh?
You only mention one HD in your config. You can count on 18mb/s as being probably a maximum sustained transfer rate from that.
If you want to test throughput, then get an app (perhaps SiSoft Sandra?) that will just throw any old data through to measure throughput - don't base it on what you can read off your disk and transfer as you may not be reaching the maximum.
That's most likely what is happening here.
If you want to test throughput, then get an app (perhaps SiSoft Sandra?) that will just throw any old data through to measure throughput - don't base it on what you can read off your disk and transfer as you may not be reaching the maximum.
That's most likely what is happening here.
MobiusPizza
Platinum Member
What about the cable settings?
When I use 100Mb LAN I usually get about 10Mb/s speed ~ which is about 2.5MB/s You can't really reach anyway near the maximum throughput.
LAN is not actually a good performer in terms of speed. Collisions are all over the place. Cable quality is also a factor
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1108319565vndqvYi4FB_4_9_l.gif
While for nForce 4 chipset 30MB/s is normal, which is about 10 times my 100Mbit speed
Your speed is about half of that. Might be because of me forementioned factors, or your other computer's network controller; its interface (PCI/PCMCIA/USB) etc, The performance of your network switch etc.
When I use 100Mb LAN I usually get about 10Mb/s speed ~ which is about 2.5MB/s You can't really reach anyway near the maximum throughput.
LAN is not actually a good performer in terms of speed. Collisions are all over the place. Cable quality is also a factor
http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/1108319565vndqvYi4FB_4_9_l.gif
While for nForce 4 chipset 30MB/s is normal, which is about 10 times my 100Mbit speed
Your speed is about half of that. Might be because of me forementioned factors, or your other computer's network controller; its interface (PCI/PCMCIA/USB) etc, The performance of your network switch etc.
There isn't a firewall, the one nic is the onboard nForce 4 nic on a DFI LanParty UT and the other is a D-Link PCI addon card. The switch is a Linksys 8 port gigabit switch that is silver and looks like their other components, I don't have the model number off hand. One system is an A64 3000+ with 1 gig of ram. The other is a slower 1100mhz athlon with 768mb ram and 4 Maxtor 160GBs with 8MB cache for strorage drives. I tested with Sandra and the drives could sustain 40 read and write. I used an FTP and got speeds at about 180mbps today.
bob4432
Lifer
annihilator your speeed is extremely low, on my 100MB lan i get ~10MB/s. the theoretical max is 12.5MB/s so yuchai and i aren't doing too far off of theoretical maximums. i make my own cables and use the trusted old 3com 3c905b cards you can get on ebay for ~$5/each. i usually buy them and give them to friends because they are just so dam reliable. 🙂 so i guess i am doing pretty good. why would you say "lan is not actually a good performer n terms of speed" ? what would you suggest? teleport? you need to look at your equipment because lan is good performer, in fact Gbe is faster than your typical sata or ata133 hdd can achieve. what is the pic you reference supposed to mean? somebody doesn't now how to configure their equipment?
ribbons spess are close to theoretical maxs also, because if 125MB/s is max and ribbon is 103MB/s you can't beat that (look at ribbons hardware)
penth, what does hdtach say? sometimes sandra is a little finicky but those speeds sound pretty close. how is the speed if you just share a folder and not use ftp? maybe th ftp software is somehow limiting you? also when you say large files what size do you mean? to me a large file is 8GB where some people will say large file and mean 3MB. if you have 100 3MB files vs 1 300MB file, the 300MB file will be faster because the drives don't have to search send wait for a reply and start all over again.
sharkeeper
Lifer
Perhaps with windows file sharing you will see low values like 80%.
Try FTP. We get 99% of 100Mbps and just over 90% of 1000Mbps utilisation direct to the innernet too.
🙁 I wish I could have a fraction of that bandwidth here.
Try FTP. We get 99% of 100Mbps and just over 90% of 1000Mbps utilisation direct to the innernet too.
🙁 I wish I could have a fraction of that bandwidth here.
/me shutters at the the thought of 3c905 and Win9x... worst combination ever, gave me nothing but hours headaches...
*****
Read #7 first to see if that is your problem
*****
As for the gig transfers, ignore any reference to the 100Mbit transfer rates people are quoting. In those cases the network card is normally the clear limiting factor. As for your performance it is on the lower end, but there are many things to take into consideration (many already mentioned). 1. Make sure you are running fullduplex. 2. What kind of file transfers are these? Windows? if that is the case make sure you are trying to pull off a mapped network drive. 3. ribbon's number are unresonable for an average user, which should have been mentioned in the post. 4. None of your equipment is really high end Gb stuff, but you should still be able to get up to the 25-30MB/s range. 5. As mentioned the PCI bus may be a factor because there has been for some time talk about PCI busses not actually being able to handle anywhere near the max. (aka certain chipsets only allow about 80MB/s instead of 133) 6. Overhead may just generally be adding up. (PCI bus - must share w/ other devices and protocol overhead; network protocol overhead - pretty large if you are using windows file sharing; switching overhead - i don't know how good of a switch the linksys is, i am not saying it is bad)
7. you aren't running the harddrives off the PCI bus are you? I'm sure you probably are since you have so many of them you probably must be using a addon (on the mobo or pci) harddisk/raid controller. This would pretty much effectively halve your speed. (i would expet between 30-35MB/s max and 25-30MB/s regularly)
Josh
sharkeeper
Lifer
Yes we get those transfers. Link utilisation graph in 2003 Server task manager goes to ruler flat one line below 100% and stays there. Net Per Sec actually shows a burst over 100 Mbps but the actual (instantaneous) reading is 97-99 Mbps all the time. Intel Pro 1000MF/TX NICS on Cisco gear with Tree Spanning Protocol used.
The drivers had this nasty habbit of corrupting (or something i can't remember exactly) and on startup the machines would tell you that you must reinstall windows. If i remember correctly if you booted into safe mode (so no network drivers were loaded) you could remove them and boot regularly but you had to stop it from reinstalling the drivers and get some new ones. This happened with about 3 driver revisions in a row and i had an entire office full of PCs that had these cards and win9x. The worst part was the problems seemed to occur at random, some days they would all be fine, others you might have 2 to fix, yet others you have 15, a real headache. sometimes new drivers wouldn't fix it and you just had to keep messing w/ it until it worked, what a waste of time.
Josh
MrControversial
Senior member
You mentioned Gigabit cards and gigabit switches, but you failed to list whether or not you have Gigabit cables (i.e. CAT6).
what i was really starting to get at was the fact that many things might be working in conjunction to cause the slow transfer rates, the biggest being the shared PCI bus w/ the network controller and the harddrive controller. The only way to fix this is to only copy to a drive on the integrated controller on the southbridge. i had similar problems with this last year, i wound up buying a new mobo that had SATA integrated and buying a converter to my PATA drive, it was the cheapest fix (since my mobo needed replaced anyways). in your case if it is an athlon 1100MHz it was built around the time when i recall articles that looked at the PCI bandwidth were coming out and to be honest i'll bet that you problems stem from the a poor bus being shared.
Josh
most of my experience with 3c905 and 3c905bc, are with nt4 and win2k and i never had a driver issue. and by the way win9x and winme are very bad by themselves and especially as net clients. my company used these nic exclusively(more then 500 nt4 and 2k). just my two cent
/edit
:thumbsup:
Concillian
Diamond Member
1) verify what your hard drive sustained write speeds are. They are usually substantially lower than read speeds, and most people only look at read speeds.
2) verify that you aren't limiting your speeds in your network card setup options. Often drivers will default to X number of packets per second. And you'll max out at X * MTU. Turn off the option that limits you to X packets per second.
I started out around ~15MB/sec on a machine to machine transfer of a 3.5GB file. Tweaking settings got my up in the 30-35 MB/sec range via windows drag and drop, approx 10 MB/sec higher using FTP.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes + WCL Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 24K
-
-
