A Question on Networks

[mendocinosummit]

At LAN parties, on my own home network, or when using hemachi download speeds of files are always so slow. It is much, much slower than my DSL connection. My friends and I can't figure this out, because I would say that the connection should be lighting fast. I do know about editing the registry so the remotely configuring scheduled tasks thing can be disabled, but that is for access time. Any ideas?

 

[cleverhandle]

You're not providing any useful information.

What programs are you using?
What speed is your DSL rated at?
What speed are you getting?
What speed are you expecting?
What kind of network card do you have?
What kind of router/modem do you have?
Where are you downloading from?

Give us something to work with here...

 

[mendocinosummit]

Well at LAN parties and on my home network the speed of my DSL is irrelevant, but it is a 7 meg connection. Using hemachi it took my host 6 minutes to download a 11 mb file; I would think no more than a minute and a half. We both have 2wire 2700hg modems and nvidia chipsets; both X2 systems. At LAN's it takes between 3 to 4 hours to download a game (between 2gb to 3 gb). I would think with just a router and no internet involved it should take less than a hour. On my home network it is about the same story.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: mendocinosummit
Well at LAN parties and on my home network the speed of my DSL is irrelevant, but it is a 7 meg connection. Using hemachi it took my host 6 minutes to download a 11 mb file; I would think no more than a minute and a half.

That's not that crazy - you're using a host-to-host VPN service. Your download is going to be limited by your friend's upload rate, which is going to be much less than 7 Mb/s. Probably less than 1 Mb/s upload. That's going to be further cut down for TCP overhead, and then the overhead of the hemachi service, which is probably quite significant. What's your rated upload (and your friend's rated upload), and what's your actual upload seen in a speed test?

At LAN's it takes between 3 to 4 hours to download a game (between 2gb to 3 gb). I would think with just a router and no internet involved it should take less than a hour.

Now that is a problem. But you're still not providing much information. What kind of network cards? What kind of wiring? What kind of router? What program are you using to transfer the data (Windows File Sharing, FTP, etc.)? There are a lot of pieces involved and they're all important.

 

[spidey07]

totally not understanding the problem here.

what are the endpoints envolved?

lan node to lan node should be at lan speeds. 10 megabyts/sec on regular 100 meg ethernet or more if you have gig ethernet.

I just see way too many variables here. what exactly is slow and exactly how is it slow?

 

[mendocinosummit]

There are not network cards involved in either case and I always use windows file sharing; is that the problem because I have and everybody else just uses our intergrated ethernet plugin. For the LAN we just use D-link router (not here with me for the summer so don't know more) with standard ethernet wires. It plays games just fine, but very, very slow downloads.

My friends DSL is 7?? KBS download and I think 100 and something KBS for upload, but he was uploading from me. I have a 700 and something upload. Using Bitlord I have hit 500 KBs and downloading a demo I once hit 1200 kbs.

I have actually never really been around networking cards that much and networking is quite new to me. Despite the fact that I built many many computers and have gave numerous people help and advice on simple home networking. Thanks for the assitance in advance.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: mendocinosummit
There are not network cards involved in either case

It doesn't have to be a "card" to be a network card. Onboard networking is still a NIC as far as networking people are concerned.

not here with me for the summer so don't know more

Well, there's not going to be much that anyone here can do, then. There are multiple components involved and you only apparently have one (your PC). Could be a bad NIC or bad drivers on either end, could be bad cables, could be a bad router, could be something screwy in the OS configuration. Way too many variables, as spidey07 said.

My friends DSL is 7?? KBS download and I think 100 and something KBS for upload, but he was uploading from me. I have a 700 and something upload. Using Bitlord I have hit 500 KBs and downloading a demo I once hit 1200 kbs.

I suspect that you're confusing kilobytes per second (KB/s) with kilobits per second (Kb/s). They're different. If you have a rated upload of 700 Kb/s, then transferring 11MB in 6 minutes over a web-based VPN is not at all unusual. Do some Googling on "tcp overhead", and "bits and bytes" while you're at it.

 

[mendocinosummit]

dslreports.com speed test result on 2006-08-28 02:16:06 EST:
5706 / 730
Your download speed : 5706 kbps or 713.2 KB/sec.
That is 182.6% better than an average user on qwest.net

Your upload speed : 730 kbps or 91.2 KB/sec.
That is 20.2% better than an average user on qwest.net