incredibly slow lan transfers

[athlonoc1]

machine 1 - windows 2000, dlink 530tx pci 10/100 nic
machine 2 - windows xp, dlink 530tx pci 10/100 nic

using 5 port 10/100 switch

lan properties, using tcp/ip

It takes ages to transfer files.

Last attempt was to transfer a 600mb file, which was indicating 121 minutes to go. Blue bar didn't move within the first 5 minutes, therefore I was accepting the time it stated.

Why is this?
Anything I can try?

Please!

Lee

 

[ScottMac]

Try "hard setting" the NIC properties for speed & duplex on both PCs. Auto-detect doesn't work well sometimes.

Also make sure your cables are in good shape (no kinks, knots, nicks in the jacket, exposed pair at the connectors, and no sharp bends).

If you made your own cables, try buying some. If you're not using at least Cat5, get some.

The processor speed, bus architecture, memory, fragementation state of your hard drives, background activity, and other things may also affect your throughput.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[athlonoc1]

Everything you mentioned is done or set apart from 'hard setting'

Sorry - what is meant by this?

Thanks

Lee

 

[ScottMac]

It means to go to each computer, bring up the NIC properties, and, instead of "Auto," set them for the same speed and duplex (probably 100Mbps, full duplex).

If 100/full still isn't fast, then sownshift it to 100/half, if that's still very slow, downshift again to 10/half.

If you can only run 10/half with any improvement in speed, then you are either using a hub, or your cable is crap.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[athlonoc1]

thanks for you replies.

Sorry I didn't respond earlier, but been off doing some things.

I am using a 5port NETVIN switch, I used to use an 8 port excel mini hub, and thought this was causing my slow speeds, so I changed.

The cable was given to me from a bloke who installed my ADSL, and said he had some unused CAT5 cable. The other machine is only about 20 feet away, so that shouldn't cause any trouble.

I assume you can't get the connections with the RJ45 wrong, as it wouldn't work at all. Would it?

Cheers scottmac.

Lee

 

[spidey07]

I assume you can't get the connections with the RJ45 wrong, as it wouldn't work at all. Would it?

Your network would still work, just be incredibly slow with incredibly slow lan transfers. I'd buy some quality cat5 patch cords from your local computer store.

 

[ScottMac]

You absolutely can have the connections wrong, get some data through, but never get decent performance, especially on high-speed links (like 100Meg Ethernet).

If the pair-order is wrong, it will kill the throughput big-time: While holding the connector with the contacts away from you and the clip down, the colors should be (left to right), white-orange, orange, white-green, blue, white-blue, white-brown, brown. The other acceptable ordering is basically the same layout, with the "green" pair swapped in position with the "orange" pair. When I say 'White-(color)", that means a mostly white wire with a strip of the color pair.

It's essential to use the correct pair order.

You may also be incorrectly assuming that the Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable the DSL installer gave you is Cat5. DSL doesn't require cable that is Category rated....it can be plain ol' "Phone Wire." Most phone companies will not spend the extra tenth-of-a-cent-per-foot unless it's absolutely necessary (and it's not). If it is indeed Cat5 cable, it will have a specific labling that says "rated EIA/TIA Category 5" or similar printed along the length of the cable. Check it out. If it's not labeled Cat5, 5e, or 6, you have plain old junk phone wire, unsuitable for even 10meg Ethernet (which requires Cat3 or better).

I'm thinking your cable is probably not right. Try buying a couple Cat5 (or 5e) jumper cables of the length you require.


Good Luck

Scott

 

[MrPALCO]

Go here for a nice graphic of the proper RJ45 pin layout.

 

[athlonoc1]

It would seem that my brain isn't in gear, and I thank you guys for your help.

I will be bying a couple of new RJ45 clips to sort this out.

I have got the wires in the wrong order, although they mirror one another at both PC's

I will still post my result when I've rearranged them.

I'm sure you top people, need a pat on the back. It's nice to hear someone say thankyou.

THANKYOU

 

[athlonoc1]

Sorry guys, it's not happening.

Problem still there. I have also tried putting the othr machine next to my main one, and used a brand new patch cable.

The cable isn't the problem.

What other causes are there.

O/S - one is win2k the other is win XP
Both card are D-Link 530TX, not bad cards.

This is madness, is there anything else I can tell you for you to help me out.

Cheers

Lee

 

[ScottMac]

OK..hmmmm. OK...assuming (don't say it) that the cables are OK, and assming that the NICs are no longer in "Auto Speed/Duplex" mode (set for 100/full...etc), and still getting poor thoughput.... next I'd try the NIC in another slot (on either/both machines, since you don't know which is funky)

and/or

check START|CONTROL PANEL|SYSTEM|HARDWARE|DEVICE MANAGER, go the the NIC submenu, and look at the properties of the NIC (checking the IRQ) and comparing it to the properties of the Hard Drives, IDE Controllers, Video card, USB controller, firewire card...any other potentially high utilization resource).

If you have a friend with another switch and computer (laptop would be OK), have him bring 'em over and see if you can narrow down the problem to a specific machine (or switch).

If you have a crossover Ethernet cable try port-to-port between the two computers (eliminate/rule out bad switch).

If you have ANY kind of firewall or firewall-like program or process running on either machine, kill it (at least for testing purposes). Kill all other unnecessary background processes (like weather bugs, stock tickers, etc).

On both machines, during testing, do a control-alt-delete, then choose the "Performance" tab: It will show you the relative load on the computer. On the WINXP machine, there's actually a tab for "Networking" that'll show you the throughput for that NIC.

Ain't this a hoot? Keep plugging at it, we'll get it nailed... (but if we find out it is/was a bad cable, I'll find you and thump you onna head ;-) ).

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Travail]

These are just a few shots in the dark...

Verify that the PC cables aren't going into the "uplink" port of your switch. I don't know if you would even get a connection if a PC was in the uplink port or not, or if your DSL would work in a standard port.

Another thing is to check the IP addresses for your PCs. All of the hardware may be correct, but you could be transferring the data across the DSL line instead of direct PC-to-PC. (I had something similar happen with my cable modem initially.)

Last idea is try a different file transfer mechanism. Maybe set up an FTP server on one system, and use that for the file copy. I'm less than thrilled with the way my Win98SE boxes move files across the LAN. :disgust:

 

[athlonoc1]

Thanks for your continued support.

I will look into your point raised, and get back to the forum.



Scottman - you wont have to find me, I'll come to you, and give you the pistol.

Hehe

Lee

 

[Hoober]

I had the same problem with my home LAN about a year ago or so. The problem came from a really bad NIC or bad drivers for it. Either way, I swapped the NIC out and presto, nice transfer speeds. The problem, like ScottMac already posted, is that it's really difficult to pinpoint what's wrong sometimes. I swapped out cable after cable, and went through two switches before I narrowed the problem down to the network card in the one machine.

Good luck!

 

[athlonoc1]

I hear what your saying and I will give it a go.
I will purchase another network card and see what happens.

One of the NIC's is brand new, whereas the other was given to me. I think this one needds replacing.

Still one thing to mention.

I tried to transfer a 25MB file which instantly started to move and within 3 seconds half of the blue bars indicating transfer portion occured. Then it just halted and after a minute I cancelled. Not sure if this means anything ( dodgey card possibly )

This was with one machine autosense and the other full 100
When I selected both 10 full it crashed.

Also changed PCI slots. This didn't reslove problems.

 

[Hoober]

If you have another computer you could try transferring files between that computer and one of the ones that isn't working too well. See if the speed improves or not. Then try it with the other computer. My guess is its either the NIC drivers or the cards themselves.

 

[athlonoc1]

Bought new NIC - netgear FA311, as one of my D-links, was second hand.

This new NIC hasn't changed a thing. In fact it seems to have got worse.

Summary.

1) tried new cat5 cable
2) tried both hub and switch
3) used new NIC

Hmmmmm.....

Could it be the use of Win2k with WinXP

I remember having a small problem getting the machines to see each other at first, which had something to do with XP as oppose to win2k

I will take out my lan connections and start again.
Are you aware of issues with these two O/S ? I think I had to create a user on win2k which was the same at the machine name on winXP

Any advice on this as being my problem.

It now seems I've exhausted the hardware issues, with cable NIC and switch/hub.

Thanks for your patience in staying with me on this one.


Lee

 

[spidey07]

OK,

post all the ip information for each machine. address, mask, gw, dns. basically post an entire copy of "ipconfig /all" from each machine.

 

[athlonoc1]

Here is IPCONFIG both machines

Windows 2000 - D-Link 530TX(nic)

Connection specific DNS Suffix:
Autoconfiguration IP Address : 169.254.171.70
Subnet Mask : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway :

Windows XP - Netgear 311(nic)

Connection specific DNS Suffix:
Autoconfiguration IP Address : 169.254.123.122
Subnet Mask : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway :


Also since putting in the new NIC, my XP machine seems to crash at random, but only when trying to transer over the lan.
And also, I was able to copy anything up to 12MB from XP to Win2k with no problem in just a couple of seconds, yet when I go for anything bigger like 24MB or 41MB then it does a little then just freezes, what the hell does that mean.

I hope your brains have more ideas than mine does. I've run dry of ideas.

Hope your not getting bored with this problem, or if your like me, just can't let it go until it gets fixed.

Cheers guys, I'm relying on your support.

Lee

 

[athlonoc1]

It seems my thread lost it's interest.

Sorry to bring it back up, but if there are other solutions or suggestions from my ipconfig posting, then I would be glad to hear from you.

This is still driving me mad.

Lee

 

[ScottMac]

Not a lack of interest, for me, I've just been busy.

With the Cable, Nics, and Switch eliminated as suspects. Then it has to be the machine, or the O/S.

Post the stats on your PCs (like processor, ram, amount and type of hard drive(s) and (if it's a buil-up machine, the motherboard model/number).

There's nothing magic about the twelve meg number, it doesn't (automatically) relate to some buffer or heap....it just happens to happen at 12...no way to guess....

Another thing you could try, it won't hurt, but may help some, is to defragment the disk. If the disk is fragmented it will slow down any transfer, especially writes to that disk ( slow disk--> buffer fills-->machine starts rejecting packets ).

If the processor or disk system is slow, that would limit your throughput (at least at high speed). If the RAM is insufficient, then the O/S will try to swap transient data and process information out to the hard disk (a slow process, compared to RAM). If the hard drive is fragmented, and there's a lot of swapping, everything will slow down to some degree.

SO, post your machine specs, defragment your hard drive(s). Then I've pretty much run out of ideas too (well, there's always the "Reload the O/S" approach...but that's usually left for last.......)

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Travail]

Athlonoc,

Could you try disconnecting your DSL modem from the USB port, rebooting both systems, and try the file transfer again?

Also, do you have any networking protocols besides TCP/IP running?

 

[athlonoc1]

Thanks Scottmac,

Here are my specs:

Machine 1
Athlon 1800XP
512 DDR2100 micron Ram
ABIT KR7A - KT266A chipset
30 Gig IBM 7200rpm
60 Gig IBM 7200rpm
D-Link 530TX nic
Windows 2K sr2
Alcatel USB ADSL
Disks Defragged every week. Last done Friday


Machine 2
Duron 900
128 PC133 major Ram
Chaintech 7AJA2 - KT133A chipset
20 Gig Maxtor 7200 rpm
Netgear FA311 ( going to change - as this machine reboots now this nic is in --- see posting ealier in this forum about FA311 )
Windows XP
Defragged drive



Thanks Travail

I did have TCP/IP and NW IPX/SPX, then tried just TCP/IP, but haven't tried unplugging the USB modem.
Will give that a go, when I've been back to shop to get another NIC, and get rid of the Netgear.

Thanks guys, your a big help to a pig of a problem.

 

[Kadarin]

Hmm..

* TCP/IP only networking protocol running, and both machines are in same subnet.
* Changed cables, changed hubs. (I assume the cables are relatively short, and are moved away from sources of electromagnetic interference?)
* Changed NICs on both PCs? Tried hardcoding speed/duplex on both..

This pretty much rules everything out but the local machine hardware or software. IRQ conflict on either of the NICs leading to inconsistent NIC operation? You might also try checking the performance monitor as the transfer is taking place to see if some process is taking up massive amounts of memory or CPU.

Good luck!

 

[ScottMac]

About the only thing I see as a possibillity at this point is the VIA chipset - Do you have the recent / the latest (4.38(2)) drivers for your respective chipsets (www.viatech.com)?

Something else that might be worth trying, to try to isolate the problem to some subsystem, would be for you to get Qcheck (www.netiq.com). It specifically tests throughput for the LAN by generating the traffic from RAM. Perhaps that will help to isolate the problem to one machine or the other, and whether it's a drive/storage issue or a LAN-related issue.

Maybe running some other benchmark utility (like Sisoft Sandra) that tests the computer in subsystems may help to isolate the problem subsystem.

Aside from that, and I'm suggesting this knowing that you've probably looked/done this, but we're in "stretch" mode here: Check the BIOS setting on both computers. Though I don't remember the specific chipsets, some will automatically rest to "safe" defaults when some problem is detected (and my recollection is that it can be a trivial problem). SO, perhaps your processors are underclocking, your RAM values are cranked to some slow values, and your drives may be set to PIO mode (any/all may severely impact your performance).

How is the cooling in your cases? Any possibilities that the motherboard(s) is/are detecting an overheat condition and throttling back the procesors? I'm not that familiar with Athlon chipsets but most Intel processors/chipsets will reduce clockspeed when an overheat condition is detected.

Do you have an firewall software installed on either machine? We've had a couple posts in the past like this where everything looks perfectly fine, but still have a problem, it turned out to be ZoneAlarm (or some other firewall software) still running in the background, even though the "front end" was shut down. If you have firwewall software installed, please remove it, just for testing purposes.

If you have some software or feature on your motherboard that allows monitoring the power system of your computers, check it out to see that none of the values (like the 12 volt rail) aren't running a little low (I think 5% is the usual tolerance level...I don't recall...but I think it's 5%). It's not likely, but is possible, that the power supply is a little light or weak and running at marginal levels, which may slow things down without causing instability. Like I said, we're in stretch mode here....

That's about it for me.


Good Luck


Scott