Hi.
I decided to upgrade to gigabit between two of my home machines.
Computer 1 is a centrino laptop (HP zt300).
Computer 2 is a makeshift file server using a 3-drive SATA RAID 5 setup via an LSI Logic 150-4 PCI SATA RAID controller for storage. This machine boots off a separate EIDE drive. All drives on this machine are 7200 rpm w/ 8mb cache.
For the laptop (no onboard gigabit), I bought a Netgear GA511 gigabit PC card.
For the "server" I replaced the 10/100 ethernet card with a Netgear GA311 PCI gigabit ethernet card.
Finally, I replaced my 10/100 5-port switch with a Netgear GS605 gigabit 5-port switch.
(There are 3 other machines connected to the switch as well. These are still using 10/100 cards.)
I am still using the same CAT-5 cabling throughout.
The switch does report gigabit connections on the 2 compuers in question (via green status light vs. orange for non-gigabit)
I know I can't expect anywhere near a 10x (1000%) speed gain, but I do believe I should be able to handle at least 20MB/sec (160Mbps) with this set up. But in most types of file transfer I see less than a 10% speed increase as compared to using the 10/100 setup.
Any ideas where my bottleneck is?
Here's details of the test transfers:
(as a side note, you can see that transferring to the RAID volume is way slower than to the stand alone disk -- shouldn't the reverse be true?)
1 file, 113 megabytes in size:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 33 seconds = 27.4 Mb/sec (=9% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 36 seconds = 25.1 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 10 seconds = 90.4 Mb/sec (=50% faster)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 15 seconds = 60.3 Mb/sec
1 file, 649 megabytes in size:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 320 seconds = 16.2 Mb/sec (<1% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 322 seconds = 16.1 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 86 seconds = 60.4 Mb/sec (=20% faster)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 103 seconds = 50.4 Mb/sec
78 files averaging 1.3 megabytes each, totaling 104 megabytes:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 23 seconds = 36.2 Mb/sec (=9% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 25 seconds = 33.3 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 17 seconds = 48.9 Mb/sec (=12% SLOWER)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 15 seconds = 55.5 Mb/sec
Can anyone make sense out of this?
TIA
-WW
I decided to upgrade to gigabit between two of my home machines.
Computer 1 is a centrino laptop (HP zt300).
Computer 2 is a makeshift file server using a 3-drive SATA RAID 5 setup via an LSI Logic 150-4 PCI SATA RAID controller for storage. This machine boots off a separate EIDE drive. All drives on this machine are 7200 rpm w/ 8mb cache.
For the laptop (no onboard gigabit), I bought a Netgear GA511 gigabit PC card.
For the "server" I replaced the 10/100 ethernet card with a Netgear GA311 PCI gigabit ethernet card.
Finally, I replaced my 10/100 5-port switch with a Netgear GS605 gigabit 5-port switch.
(There are 3 other machines connected to the switch as well. These are still using 10/100 cards.)
I am still using the same CAT-5 cabling throughout.
The switch does report gigabit connections on the 2 compuers in question (via green status light vs. orange for non-gigabit)
I know I can't expect anywhere near a 10x (1000%) speed gain, but I do believe I should be able to handle at least 20MB/sec (160Mbps) with this set up. But in most types of file transfer I see less than a 10% speed increase as compared to using the 10/100 setup.
Any ideas where my bottleneck is?
Here's details of the test transfers:
(as a side note, you can see that transferring to the RAID volume is way slower than to the stand alone disk -- shouldn't the reverse be true?)
1 file, 113 megabytes in size:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 33 seconds = 27.4 Mb/sec (=9% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 36 seconds = 25.1 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 10 seconds = 90.4 Mb/sec (=50% faster)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 15 seconds = 60.3 Mb/sec
1 file, 649 megabytes in size:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 320 seconds = 16.2 Mb/sec (<1% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 322 seconds = 16.1 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 86 seconds = 60.4 Mb/sec (=20% faster)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 103 seconds = 50.4 Mb/sec
78 files averaging 1.3 megabytes each, totaling 104 megabytes:
* gigabit ethernet to RAID volume -- 23 seconds = 36.2 Mb/sec (=9% faster)
* regular ethernet to RAID volume -- 25 seconds = 33.3 Mb/sec
* gigabit ethernet to boot disk -- 17 seconds = 48.9 Mb/sec (=12% SLOWER)
* regular ethernet to boot disk -- 15 seconds = 55.5 Mb/sec
Can anyone make sense out of this?
TIA
-WW
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