Windows 8/8.1 wired and wireless SMB3 question

[azazel1024]

Under Windows 8 and 8.1 with SMB 3, there is a protocol for SMB multichannel that will effectively band together multiple NICs to give higher network bandwidth. I use this to great effect with my desktop and server with a pair of Intel Gb CT NICs in them giving me around 230MB/sec between the machines and the RAID0 arrays in them.

Is it possible to do the same with Wifi and wired connections? It certainly doesn't seem to do it by default based on my testing. Wirelessly I can get about 20MB/sec down to my laptop and over the wire to its Realtek GbE NIC I can get about 114MB/sec. When both are in operation I get the same 114MB/sec from my server and the upstream is also the same 112MB/sec that I get with just the Realtek NIC in play (which is actually better than Win7sp1 was doing on my laptop as it would default to wireless if both connections were up at the same time, so I'd have to disable wireless for it to use the wired connection when on the same network. Win 8.1 at least defaults to the faster connection).

A 15% or so speed increase doesn't mean a whole lot right now, but I am switching over to 11ac shortly which hopefully means I'll be seeing more like 30+MB/sec with Wifi. I wouldn't mind being able to take advantage of a 25+% speed increase if it is possible to do SMB multichannel over Wifi and wired connections (the SSD in my laptop can certainly handle the speeds).

 

[seepy83]

My understanding is that SMB Multichannel requires NICs to be the same interface type and speed. So, it will work if:
Your server has a pair of 1Gb NICs and your client has a pair of 1Gb NICs.
Your server has a pair of 10Gb NICs and your client has a pair of 10Gb NICs.

SMB Multichannel will not work if:
Your server has a pair of 10Gb NICs and your client has a pair of 1Gb NICs.
Your server or client has a 1Gb NIC and a 10Gb NIC

Obviously there are many more possible combinations, but you get the point.

 

[azazel1024]

It makes sense, but a shame it can't work over heterogenous connections.

It is nice having the ability of homogenous connections at all though. It almost makes me wish I had stuck in a third Cat5e when I built my office, just in case/because. I need to upgrade my RAID array soon as I am running out of space (1+1TB drives in my desktop and 2+2TB drives in my server). A couple of brand new 7200rpm 3TB drives in both machines in RAID0 could probably saturate 3 GbE links.

As it stands I am array limited in some of my transfers now that they've been filling up (25% capacity free on my desktop array).