Gigabyte LAN running at 33% WHY oh WHY!

[PoopyPants]

ok this isnt for me its for a buddy who just got his gigalan set up.

he has a server which he runs and also a desktop , they are both connected to the netgear GS605 Gigalan Switch, which in turn is connected to a Linksys 5 port router.

Server NIC - Netgear GA311
Desktop NIC - Onboard Realtek 10/100/1000
Router - Linksys BEFW1154
Switch - Netgear GS605
Both PC's Running XP Pro

Whenever he enables Jumbo frames in the NIC properties his LAN goes "MUTE" - Mute meaning he can see his server but can not remote into it.
but he does not loose internet.

the netgear gigalan application says he is running at 33% bandwidth when testing LAN speeds with large files, rinning something like 280mbps

The more he messes with it the worse he gets and right now he is running less than 100mbit.

the netgear switch has NO web interface for administering the switch. which is a total pile of poo and netgear took the cheap way out.

Help me help him out.
none of the NIC properties that he changes helps, infact it either kills his LAN or makes it worse. it seems like he can NOT run Jumbo frames or it dies. which is wrong since gigalans use jumbo frames.

what settings in his NIC properties should he use and what tweaks can he use in order to maximise his gigalan while still maintaining his speeds for internet.
i dont want and he dont want these tweaks to be so high that it causes his internet to go to hell.

can you gents help.

 

[JackMDS]

Are you sure that the Switch is Jumbo Frame capable?

Not all Giga Switches are frame capable.

Using WinXP pro.280Mb/sec. is a good outcome.

About Giga: Peer to Peer Giga Home Networks.

:sun:

 

[PoopyPants]

good article Jack thanks a million.

and there is ZERO and i mean ZERO information about the netgear switch friggin netgear are a bunch of retards if you ask me. they dont include anything with it and the website dont have anything

 

[PoopyPants]

just talked to him and he says he has a friend who recommended that switch cuz he's pulling 800-900mbps
and also saw other places posting similar speeds.

so... hhmm..... he's not sure what to do.... nothing works. the netgear nic he has only has jumbo frames on and off, which is stupid while his realtek has 2kb ~ 7kb jumbo frames. which 7kb is not high enough.

only thing i can think of is his realtek onboard nic is the issue. since he got the netgear 1000 card with the router i believe he's off to go see what 1000 NIC's he can find, i just told him to get the identicle netgear one he has in the server.

 

[aug1516]

Whoever told you they were getting speeds of around 800-900mbs were either a) lying b) copying files from memory c) copying files between some fast SCSI Raid Arrays. When you move to gigabit ethernet the hard drive becomes the bottleneck so unless you own a hard drive capable writing at speeds of 800-900mbs (112.5MB/s), you will not see speeds that fast. One of the newer 15k drives out, the Maxtor Atlas 15kII, is capable of READ speeds of up to 97MB/s (about 776mbs). Now this is only a peak rate achieved during a sequential read operation, it is highly doubtful you would ever see performance like that during normal file server type usage. That is also only the read speed of the drive, not the write. If you are copying data from a drive like this over your network you have to put it somewhere and unless it can fit into memory that place will have to be another hard drive. I don't have numbers for you on that but for purposes of this post lets assume it can write the same speeds it can read. That's still only going to get you 776mbs, still not the 800-900mbs that some other people claimed. Now I doubt your friend is running this network with top of the line 15k scsi drives so they are going to be limited by the speeds of the drives they are using. With standard 7200rpm hard drive I think speeds of around 200-300mbs could be expected. If you move to some faster SCSI drives then performance around 400-500mbs can actually be seen during real world usage. The only way to really see what you network is capable of in theory is to test by copying files to/from system memory on each machine. There are programs out there to do this but this only gives you a theoretical speed, not real-world performance.

 

[aug1516]

Forgot to talk about jumbo frames... There are very few inexpensive gigabit switches that actually support jumbo frames. As far as I know, the SMC products were the only ones under $500 that actually did. Regardless, jumbo frames will not always provide you with an increase in speed. Their main purpose was to make the packet size larger and give the CPU less packets to deal with, lowering CPU utilization.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: PoopyPants
he's pulling 800-900mbps

I think that only thing he is "Pulling" is his leg, or your leg, or both.

Even with super scsi you would not get such a "Speed" with WinXP. Win2003 or other high level "Real Server" OSs migh get close to it.

:sun:

 

[nightowl]

I have never seen 800-900 Mbps even on an enterprise network. I even wonder if it would be possible to sustain that speed. The most I have ever seen using normal network traffic (no traffic generators) is about 600Mbps and that was a 5min average on high end equipment (Cisco 6509 with Sun and HP servers).

 

[PoopyPants]

yeah i figured the 800-900 was a bit of an exaggeration i am only the middle man passing along info .

if its 800-900 then divide that by 8 then you'd achieve a real 100+Kb/sec thats more realistic if its some uber fast raid arrays. but not standard in home set ups.

he still cant make it work, and was swapping out some hardware to try different setups. so ill pass along the info to him and see where he stands tonight when i talk to him
i too also figured that a cheap home giga switch didnt support jumbo frames expecially considering netgear has NO info on this device what so ever in the box nor on their website.

hes running faster than a 10/100 swet up but too bad gigabyte nic cards are simply a lie.
many thanks for the info fellas.

 

[PoopyPants]

ok that didnt make any sense haha.. so shoot me i had just woke up.

if they are claiming 800-900 then in reality, depending on what software they are using to measure the speeds, then it would translate out to be a real world speed in Kb of alot slower.

its the whole megabit megabyte stuff..