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forcing traffic over gigabit direct connection

D

Dubb

Platinum Member
ok, here's my dillemma:

I have 2 desktops with gigabit controllers. they're directly connected with a standard cat 5e cable, and also both are running from older 10/100 nics into my linksys router/ WAP (for internet acess and access to my wireless network). I would like traffic between the two desktops to ONLY travel over the gigabit connection, but for some reason, data always goes over the 100Mbps router. I do High Res audio work, so I'm occasionally transfering 10 GB+ of tracks at a time...the speeds of GBE would really help...any suggestions? Both computers are running windows xp pro.

TIA
 
well if u can setup static ip addresses for the computers (assuming ur using DHCP for the direct connex) on the GBE there should be no problem. then instead of copying stuff from \\computername\drive try \\ip address\drive

edit: with the ip address of the other computer through the direct connection instead of its ip address connected through the router
 
Set static IPs for the Gigabit adaptors that are outside the range of the rest or your LAN.

e.g. if you are using the 192.168/16 subnet for your LAN, give your gigabit adaptors static addresses on the 10/8 subnet.

If you specify the IP addresses for the transfer manually they will automatically go via the appropriate adaptor - e.g. if you map a network drive to \\10.0.0.2\c then it will go via the gigabit network in the scenario above.

You should be able to configure microsoft networking to select the Gb network automatically, by giving the Gb adaptor a higher priority binding slot than the normal LAN adaptor. In the event that 2 possible connections available, windows will take the one given highest priority.

If for some reason you cannot use a different IP range then you can use the ROUTE command to force communication to a specific IP to go via a specified adaptor.

Oh, and yes, Cat5 will handle Gbit, although Cat5e is strongly recommended.
 
or you can just enable internet sharing from one of the computer so that one of the computer can only communicate using the gigabit nic 🙂
Goodluck...
 
Yes, and you can set different hostnames in the hosts file on the two Gbit machines

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

so you can have aliases for the gigabit connection (like MusicA and MusicB for the gigabit, and set the computer names differently so they are unique to the 10/100 side of the LAN)...

Cat5e is Gbit rated...
 
Thanks for the info on cat 5/5e v. cat 6/6e. I wonder now why my IT guy required re-wiring from cat 5e to cat 6e if we didn't need to . . .
 
I wonder now why my IT guy required re-wiring from cat 5e to cat 6e if we didn't need to . . .
Click to expand...

Working and working better is why. We have a very fancy cable tester at work, and there is about double the bandwith capacity from cat5e to cat6e. So, yes you would make a connection with cat5e cabling, you would just never push the limits of cat6 equipment.
 
hey guys,

thanks for all the info...the static ip trick worked like a charm. <slams head on table for not thinking of that>

now my next question...is it worth the ~$15 to buy a cat6 cable if one of the GBE controllers is still on a 32/33 pci bus? the other is on an 875P board, so I'm not worried about bandwidth there.


 
hi again,
after some investigating, it appears that only a small portion of the traffic is going over GBE. I mapped out all the drives to the static IP of the NICs and when transfering data, the 100Mbps controller is running at 70-80% and the GBE is around 1% or less (it used to be 0%). I'm back to being stumped. Tried to assign the GBE a higher priority as someone suggested, and it appears that it already is! wierd. Is the router somehow "stealing" traffic? also - when booting, windows reports that the mapped network drives could not be loaded (I had "reconnect at login" checked) and if I click on the drive it askes for the password.

perhaps I mapped the network drives or set the static ips incorrectly

I gave one nic an address of xxx.xxx.xx.153 and the other xxx.xxx.xx.154 and put them both on the same subnet, which was different than the subnet of the router. did I miss something?

Thanks again for all the help!
 
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