HELP! Problems with Gigabit LAN (nic-to-nic)

[StraightPipe]

Ok, I'm trying to add gigabit to the existing 100mb LAN in my house. I have 6 PC's on my 100LAN, and am just trying to get 2 PC to go Gigafast.

So I disconnected both PC's from the 100LAN. (I've got a new pc on winXP and an old pc on winXP) to install, but now I've got them both hooked up on both LAN's

Both show 2 network connections, and show my new 1000 cards installed correctly in the device manager.

Using brand new cat6 cables from new egg (straight cable)
and trendnet 10/100/1000 cards. (the cards have an auto crossover feature.)

If I check the "status" of the network connections It shows all data being sent from the old box on the 100mb connection, but all data recieved comes across the 1000. I'd really like to get them using the 1000 net for all file transfer with each other. and the 100 for internet connection, and possibly for file sharing with other PC's on the network.

right now I have no network bridges, but i think that i can disable all file sharing on both 100nic's to force the 1000 line, and then bridge the networks to allow the other PC's to share too.

Any Ideas?

 

[StraightPipe]

ok, so I've now got the networks bridged on both PC's.

but I noticed that all the traffic on the old PC is going through the new one on the gig line, and no traffic on the 100 line. (the new PC is showing traffic on both of course 100 for internet and 1000 for file xfers)

will this slow anything by having traffic routed through my new PC?

can I set it up where each PC will access internet over 100, transfer files between the 2 main PC's on the 1000, and any file fransfers with the extra PC's on the 100.


thanks

 

[Fencer128]

Hi,

A couple if ideas (it's late - I'm tired and this may not work!)

1. Put the 100 and 1000 networks on separate switches. Connect the 100 switch to the net.

2. If you have a single switch, create a different subnet to the 1000 card for the 100 card (need two subnet masks and IP addresses). Make the subnet for the 100 card the same as the subnet of your IP address for the net. The card on the 1000 subnet won't then "see" the net? but will see the other machines on the internal LAN if they share the 1000 card's subnet?

i.e. cards on internal LAN on different subnet to the cards you want to have net access (and that have the same subnet as that provided by the ISP). With many machines this gets complicated as you need NAT!?

3. I'm not sure exactly of your set up still, it may be that simply increasing the metric of the 1000 cards from 1 to 2 (under TCP/IP properties) could be a simple solution to this.



Good luck,

Andy

 

[StraightPipe]

I had considered getting a 1000 switch for @ $100. but then I realized that those arent "true" 1000 switches, they only have 1 1000 port (for a server) and many 100 ports (for clients)... a real gigaswitch is way out of my price range, besides I should be able to do this with 2 1000 nic's and 2 100 nic's on a router.

 

[Fencer128]

Originally posted by: StraightPipe
I had considered getting a 1000 switch for @ $100. but then I realized that those arent "true" 1000 switches, they only have 1 1000 port (for a server) and many 100 ports (for clients)... a real gigaswitch is way out of my price range, besides I should be able to do this with 2 1000 nic's and 2 100 nic's on a router.

What about my subnet or metric ideas?

Andy

 

[StraightPipe]

current setup

100
have linksys router connected to DSL modem for all PC's to shre internet connection
have 2 main rigs connected to this via 100 nic's.
also have an 8 port switch connected to give me extra ports for the other 4 PC's on the 100 LAN

1000
have 2 PC's each with 1000 nic's connected with straight cable

the 2 100 nic's have file sharing disabled
the 2 1000 nic's have file sharing enabled
the 2 networks are bridged on both XP boxes.

internet access for the XP boxes is all routed through the 1000 LAN onto the new XP box :frown:
file sharing between the 2 XP boxes works great across the 1000 LAN
file sharing between the old XP box and the rest of the network moves across the 1000 to the new XP box, then across the 100 to the router to the PC requesting the file :frown: this takes a really long time.

tests: I moved a 700MB mpeg file to-and-from to test the speeds (are aproximate)
new to old (1000) - 2-3 minutes
new to old (100) - 7-9 minutes (this is what I used to get before gigabit)
new XP box to the other PC's on the switch (100) - 12-14 minutes (i can live with this, because it's rare)
old XP box to the other PC's on the switch (1000to100) - 20-25 minutes :frown: (this connection should be same as above)

Edit: just saw your second post fencer, please explain metric
Edit2: do you mean adjusting the subnets on the routing table?

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

From the looks of your times, you aren't getting anything close to what you should get with those cards! A 700mb file in two minutes is about 6mb/sec, I do that easily on my 100mbit connections! I can get about 25mb/sec in one direction, but only about 8mb/sec in the other direction. I believe the 25mb/sec is being limited by other factors, but I'm not happy with the 8mb/sec speed.

If you look at my thread, http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=36&threadid=1155259 you'll see I'm sorting through a lot of the same issues. I have the gigabit cards on their own subnet so they won't be getting confused. I have no problems getting the traffic to use the gigabit connection, however, when I push data to the remote machine, it's about 1/3 the speed of reading from the remote machine! Since I really want the speed for backup, this isn't what I had in mind!

BTW, I just ordered a 5 port gigabit switch from NewEgg for $89.99, and all 5 ports are gigabit, see the info below.. I'm also getting a couple of Intel gigabit cards, so I can see if there's a difference, depending on which type of NIC I'm communicating to/from. I'm planning on running just the gigabit cards on four systems into the switch, and then connecting this switch to the rest of the LAN. It will be amusing...

A major part of my reasoning is to learn something about gigabit hardware, and that's sure happening with this rig!



<DIV>SWITCH EDIMAX ES-5500S 5PT GIGABIT (Qty=1,Price=89.99)</DIV>

<DIV>Subtotal:89.99, TAX:.00, Shipping and Handling Charge**:5.00, Total:94.99
</DIV>

 

[StraightPipe]

If I could get times like that with the 100 i would have never spent the money to go gigabit.

so far the mass confusion has been worse than the money (2 1000mb nic's @ $35 each + 7' cat6 @ $5 + $15 shipping= $90)

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

What kind of file transfer speeds do you get with your 100mbit connections? If you're getting less than at least 5-6 mbyte/second, something is significantly wrong with your environment. I just dragged a 700mb file from a machine on the 100mbit link, it took 80 seconds to fetch it, for a speed of 8.75mbyte/second. When I copy it back to the remote machine, it takes 110 seconds for a speed of 6.35mbyte/second. These machines use cheap NICs, one is the Realtek on-board NIC, the other one is a $15 Netgear NIC, nothing special about the machines.

 

[StraightPipe]

before I added anything gigabit it was about 5:30 to send or 8:00 to recieve. (700MB)

trendnet cheap nic's. linksys BEFSR41 router

 

[StraightPipe]

If I dont brigde either connection I lose internet access (which should be coming through 100 LAN, if i bridge then all traffic is routing through the 1000 line to the new box.


maybe i need to fix something on the 100 LAN... I had disabled file + printsharing on the 100 nic's

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

I didn't bridge my connection, I just assigned it a manual IP address in a different subnet than my LAN, since it's a private wire. I have no idea how the dynamics of bridging them would affect throughput, and I don't want to start finding out.

I should have a gigabit switch tomorrow, so I'll disable the second NIC and run the machine with the single gigabit NIC and see if that affects anything...

 

[StraightPipe]

how are you seting the subnet? is that in the nic settings?

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

Sure, I set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0, I figured that was a given. I also pointed the default gateway at the other machine, in case it had an effect.