Effective transfer speed through a 1Gb switch

Wavey

Afternoon all.

I have read some varying reports on what transfer speed you can achieve through a 1Gb network.
I have 2 pc's with 1Gb net cards connected through a 1Gb switch using cat5e cables.
I'm only getting about 3-4MB/sec when coping mp3's.

This dosent seem right to me.

Both net cards are auto negotiating to 1Gb Full duplex. they dont have an option to force 1Gb half duplex.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

What else can I try. Cat6?

Thanks,

Wavey.

edit. There are 2 100Mb devices also connected to the switch. Could these be bringing the speed down? The switch is a Netgear GS605.
I cant disconnect them at them moment to test.

BoB_BoT

hey Wavey that sounds really wrong speed wise. even if it was 100mb, are you using self build cables or shop-bought? cat 5e should have no problem supporting gigabit. I can't see the 100mb devices causing problems as you're not running through them. Have you tried disabling firewalls and anti-virus temporarily, you never know what your av/firewall is throttling on ya or slowing you down. You could try a crossover cable to see if its a switch problem.

looked up the router, it says it's a 10Gb, serious bottle neck somewhere in the setup :S

Wavey

Hi Bob thanks for the reply.

No I'm using store bought cables. Not running any firewalls, just AVG which dosent seem to make any difference when disabled.

Pretty stumped.

axer

Your pc is prob the bottleneck here - cpu & i/o (hdd etc). Try out out & compare a crossover cable pc to pc connection.
You could speed up the transfer rate by upping the mtu from 1500 to 9000. That will really only help large transfers.

Moriarty

It sounds like either a duplex mismatch or a dodgy cable. Try forcing both nics to 1000/Full and using new cables, odds are one or the other will fix this. I doubt it's a pc issue - any machine made in the past 5-8 years should be able to saturate a 100mbit connection easily which is more than double what you're getting at the moment.

Wavey

Thanks for the replies lads.

I have tried swapping out the cables and am now getting about 10MB per sec.
I tried a crossover cable and got about 5MB per sec.

I don't have the option to force 1000Full on the nic's only 100Full, but they are both auto-negotiating to 1000Full.

Both hard drives are SATA so I don't thing that is the bottleneck.

I have read that windows can reserve a certain amount of the bandwith for itself. Read here:
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t229565-re-low-network-utilization-on-windows-xp.html

Could this be the issue? It's not something I want to play around with without knowing more about it.

thanks,

Wavey.