Does anyone have a network that works?!!?

[zephyrprime]

Here's the deal, I've got three computers:
cyrix 150 win98
k6-450 win98
PIII 850 win2000

And I've got 100mbit nics up the wazoo:
1 netgear
1 linksys
1 davicom
1 smc
But I can't get transfer speeds above ~30-40mbit. I've been coumbing through old pc magazine articles and it seems like Windows may actually be unable to run ethernet cards any faster than this because Redmond couldn't write a piece of high performance code to save Bill Gates' life. So is there anyone out there that can get 100mbit out of their nics? Can linux do it? Can netware?

I've tried crossover cables and my d-link switch but the results are the same. Please help me!! I'm going nucking futts try to search the net for info!!!!

 

[warlord]

I have a network that works.

100Mbits is burst speed anyhow, not maintained I believe. I don't think you can get 10Mbit on a 10Mbit cards either.

 

[1KrazyFool]

You must realize that there are other factors effecting the network transfers. One possibility is the speed of your hard drives. Slower drives and interfaces can barely write at 3-4MB/sec. Another can be the programs you're using. I've always used WS-FTP but it's not as fast as the CLI ftp. I can get 11MB/sec from my Win2000 box to my linux box. Both hard drives are 7200 RPM drives. Make sure DMA is enabled on all those boxes. I'd focus on the K6 and the P3 boxes. That other one won't be as fast, ever.

 

[crazychicken]

I have a network that works also
but in answer to your question:
nothing is ever rated @ what it actually runs at. my cable is rated @ 1.5mbps, but i only get like 400 k/sec (and its NOT a problem with the user/site ratio)

but anyway, what do you need that fast of a transfer for??

later
david

 

[JackMDS]

Take a look at this page:



http://www.homenethelp.com/web/explain/about-network-speeds.asp

 

[zephyrprime]

Thanks for all the replies. I know that nothing ever performs as rated, but my 40mbits was just too far below spec. I've noticed in old pc magazine aticles that 10mbit cards were all able to run exactly at 7.74-7.76 mbits on the tests they ran several years ago. So that's 77% of spec.

I suspected that the hard drive speed may be a limiting factor so I tried to set up ram drive transfers. The speeds were essentially the same (~40mbit). The primary difference was the consistancy of the throughput (which makes sense).

I should also mention that if I initiate file copy from my win2000->win98 box, the speed is only ~19mbit. BUT, if I initiate the transfer from my Win98 to copy from the win2000->win98 box, the speed if 40mbit.

I was perusing the network books at B&N today. God damn, I can't believe the obvious advice put in some of these books. They say "add more ram to your server for better performance". What?! Really?! :disgust:

 

400k/sec? Like kbps not K/sec? right.
400K/sec is like 3.2Meg line

 

[trend]

well.. i have a cable modem that goes to my linux firewall/router (pentium 100) that goes to a router and then to my laptop and i get this speed from dslreports:
speed result

but.. my nics are the crappy bottleneck in my network... i can only ftp to my server around 1megabyte per sec or something like that

 

[bigshooter]

Where are you getting the speed from? If it's inside windows then a small part of the problem will be tcp/ip overhead and any other protocols that you are using. When you are transferring files, more than just the file goes along, addressing, ttl information.. etc. This takes up bandwidth too. I normally dont get much more than 40-50% on my Linksys router when transferring from one comp to another.

 

[JackMDS]

I don?t know zephyrprime specific problem. Most of people just set the network with TCP/IP (since it is needed for the Internet connection). TCP/IP is not fast and not very safe.

It is better to leave TCP/IP bound only for the Internet connection. And install NetBEUI, and bind it for File and printer sharing. It faster and safer.

 

[BDiBlackened]

uh, did you actually consider that:

on a 4 computer network:

A copying file to B
C copying file to D

each doing 40 MBit, thats a network throughput of 80...

your 100 is never ever gonna be realised between 2 machines, few harddrives run that fast anyway, and networking is a more IO intensive thing that you assume.. but the reason for having a large fast network like 100 is not for max speed between 2 users, its for high speeds between many users.

you wont ever need to transfer data at speeds over 40mbit anyway.. thats fast enough to write a CD at 32x, or play about 500 games of quake 3 arena.

"Up the wazoo" doesnt really describe your network.. heh

 

[BDiBlackened]

and i notice, that 2 of your computers are a bit lame, cpu wise, to expect 100mbit..

 

[BDiBlackened]

JackMDS:
"TCP/IP is not very safe"

uhm. That is quite a daft thing to say really, isnt it. TCP/IP provides reliable data transmission at some overhead (Transmission Control Protocol) - to say it is not safe makes you you look like the MD in your nick should be 'AS'

"netBEUI is safe"

Net beui is a non-routed protocol for small lans. it doesnt care at all where it's packets go. And you call this safe? Sorry, wrong answer. Further.. the larger a NetBEUI network becomes, the more of a dog it becomes. NetBEUI is not supported by gaming applications so these guys couldnt play any internet based games against each other and it wont do for accessing the internet. no diagnostic tools like ping, work on netbeui, seeing as they were written for tcp/ip

by adding protocols to your machine you cause a performance overhead and memory usage rises. this may outweigh any performance advantage that NB will give over TCP in the file/print sharing arena.

Think McFly, THINK!

 

[spidey07]

WOW, there is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

First off, the cyrix and k6-450 are too slow to really push a 100 megabit network.
Second off, the TCP stack in any MS product other than 2000 is just plain terrible. No proper window size adjustment and it does not follow the RFCs for the TCP algorithm. You asked can netware or linux do it. YES, but it all still depends on interrupt handling, phyisical disk speed and proc. One poster said he got 11 MBytes/sec going from a 2000 box to a linux box...that I can believe (using FTP, very efficient...using OSs with good stack)
Third, that little KBytes/sec graph on internet explorer does not count all the overhead involved.
Fourth, acknowledgement processing adds latency to the connection further preventing full 100 megabits throughput.
Fifth, 100 Megabits measures the frame clock. 100 BaseT is actually clocked at 125 Megabits/sec but 25 megabits is used for encoding scheme. And given the necessary interframe gap (one frame cannot be directly behind another) the true maximum thruput of a 100 Base-T network is something like 97% utilization. And don't get me started on collisions, half duplex really can't run much more than 30-40%. I've been assuming full duplex the whole time.

All and All Zephyrprime 30-40 Mbit is pretty good taking into consideration all of the above points. If you really want to see a 100 Base-T network fly open 10 FTP sessions and start them all with different files on different physical disks. Then you can fill a 100 meg pipe, provided the server has some beef to it. I've done some tesing in the LAB with gigabit ethernet cards and can get about %50 utilization before being bound by physical disk (serious 15k raid disk)

hope my rambling helps!

 

[cavingjan]

<< NetBEUI is not supported by gaming applications so these guys couldnt play any internet based games against each other and it wont do for accessing the internet. >>


This is the whole point to using NetBEUI with TCP. TCP can handle all internet traffic and gaming while NOT being bound to File &amp; Printer sharing. Personally I use IPX (I know its not that great but I still like Diablo 1) bound to my sharing and TCP is unbound so it limits my exposure to outside sources. If you need to share files over the internet, consider VPN instead.

 

[Akash]

dont use a hub get a switch.. full duplex

 

[RossGr]

The only meaningful measure of the network its ability to do what you need. I have a sweet little 4 system network sharing a cable modem through a SMC Barricade. Not even sure what my transfer rates are, I ran that same DSLreports test shown down thread and rated up in the INSANE range. I can play the games I want and trandfer files quickly and easily. All protocols are installed (TCP/ip, IPX, and Netbuie) with Netbuie as the default. All I care about is that it works and I don't have to fight some problem every time I try to save a file to another system. Mine works fine and this is with generic $10 100/10 Lan cards.

 

[Tsaico]

Don't forget, if you are using a hub, the bandwidth is being shared. That could be the reason for a loss of speed. If you really want, get a good quality switch. We use a intel buisness 8-port switch, (origionally 299.99, but we got it for 29.99 as a pricing error off some now dead web retailer) and using Sandra, it shows us at 994 burst and 810 sustained. He uses a lynksis nic and I have a 3com. Our lines were crimped by us using cat5e from home depot.(great price for a 1000'!) Good luck.

 

[ArkAoss]

my network works ok, too. but never really checked the sys to sys transfer rate.

 

[zephyrprime]

It's me again (the originator of this thread). Thanks to everyone for the replies. There have been some issues raised here so I thought I'd respond to them.

I'm of course performing my file transfers one at a time using plain old icon dragging in windows. I'm metering throughput with a metering program and also the old fashioned way: a stop watch stopwatch.

I've tried using netbui and I'm familiar with the security risks using tcpip.

I'm also aware of overhead but there's no way that overhead could account for 40-50% of the pipe.

Also, I'd like to contend that 100mbit really ain't that fast. It takes me many hours to back up my hard drives using the 100mbit network I've got now. And I'm backing up from hard drives to hard drives (no tape). 100mbit = 12.5MB. Hard drives nowadays do 30MB sustained on the outter tracks and 20MB on the inner tracks (that's not even considering the higher performance drives.)

I'm really thinking the problem may be Microsoft's network interface layer - especially in win 9x. I wish I had another win2000 machine or linux machine I could test against but alas, I do not. An old article I read in PC Magazine stated that there was a problem in NT4's implementation of its network device interface that prevented server NICS from ever having low cpu utilization and high throughput compared with Netware. The problem was planned to be fixed in NT5. I wonder if it was?

It's interesting to note that the only person on this thread who has reported ~90mbit speeds was using Win2000 &amp; Linux. It may well be impossible to attaing high speeds with win9x.

Also, I'd contend that my cpus aren't too wimpy to achive 100mbit when using ram disk tests as I have done before.