ASUS A8N Gigabit ethernet controller - Is it working right?

[sxr7171]

I hooked my IBM X31 laptop with Gigabit Ethernet directly to the Nforce4 Gigabit Lan controller (if I remember correctly as it is the only one that supportse PCI Marvell c auto crossover) and after setting an automatic private IP address I was able to connect the two machines. I realize that nobody gets anywhere close to 100% but I think 8-13% (80-130Mbps) is way too slow. This was reported by task manager in the connections tab. Is anyone using the this controller and getting the expected speeds (maybe 200-350Mbps)? Maybe there's some issue with the drivers or something?

 

[SunSamurai]

Thats 10 - 16MBps. Sounds about right for a laptop.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
Thats 10 - 16MBps. Sounds about right for a laptop.

For a laptop with Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 7200 RPM hard drive, and Pentium-M 1.6 GHz processor?

 

[SunSamurai]

well to be sure use a tool to get your thoughput bandwidth on the hard drive. also your data may be heavely fragmented.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
well to be sure use a tool to get your thoughput bandwidth on the hard drive. also your data may be heavely fragmented.

I'll try that, but I know my HDD has PerfectDisk run on it every night. I'm almost obsessive compulsive about keeping my computers running fast. Also the laptop was doing the reading while the Raptor on the desktop was doing the writing. I know that the NVidia controller gave me 8-13% while the PCI based Marvell Controller gave me 7-8% much like what you would expect from 100Mbps ethernet. THe readings in percentages were the same on both machines.

 

[sxr7171]

Does anyone else have any insight on this?

 

[mechBgon]

Set the nVidia NIC to "Autonegotiate for 1000Mbit FD" and "Optomize for: Throughput" and see if that helps. But the data has to go someplace, and if your laptop's running antivirus software, it's going to have to get scanned in real-time too. Don't expect miracles

edit: if the lappie's NIC supports Jumbo Frames, enable that on both systems too.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Set the nVidia NIC to "Autonegotiate for 1000Mbit FD" and "Optomize for: Throughput" and see if that helps. But the data has to go someplace, and if your laptop's running antivirus software, it's going to have to get scanned in real-time too. Don't expect miracles

edit: if the lappie's NIC supports Jumbo Frames, enable that on both systems too.

Thanks. I'll try that. I don't really use real time virus scanning though.

 

[sxr7171]

Oh man! It flew this time! I enabled jumbo frames at 9000 for both controllers and set both controllers to 1000Mbit full duplex. I was hitting different speeds depending on the kind of files I was sending. For 1.24GB of little files (50-100kb each) it was slow and it hovered around 4-7% but peaked at 26% for a short while. But for larger video files (50-100MB each) it was doing a consistent 22% and even peaking at 36%. It took about 2.5 minutes to transfer about 3.34 GB of the bigger files which I thought was impressive and satisfies the promise of Gigabit Ethernet IMHO. For the smaller files it took about 3 minutes to transfer 1.24 GB.

i noticed that even when I had to transfer the little files internally on my desktop from the Raptor to my Maxtor Diamondmax 10 plus it took about 3 minutes for the internal transfer. So it seems that Gigabit Ethernet lets you transfer at roughly the same speed as your hard drive/file system will allow.