File Sharing over a LAN

Sully

Hey guys,

Myself and a group of people are taking over a large room in my house and are going to connect all the PC's via a network. We all have network cards and the cables, we have tried it before and got hooked up grand. We can see each others files but the sharing is very slow. I was told that to transfer large files from one pc to another could take a very long time and wouldnt be to fast. Here is exactly what I was told::

"10Gigabytes in optimaly conditions (one cable linking two pcs) will transfer 10 gigabytes in 3 hours. Thats like 1mb per min. its the same as a really fast 8mb broadband connection in optimal conditions and the only way to fix is to replace lan cards and cables."

Now, I was not aware of this until now. I am pretty good with computers and do hope to get a job out of them but this I was completley unaware of. I have a network set up here at home for broadband and filesharing and I never found it much of a problem.

Can anyone offer any advice / comment on what I was told? Also, is there any type of free software out there which allows filesharing over a LAN (something like Limewire?).

Thanks a lot guys for your advice on this!

The Real B-man

thats about right to be honest its the wonder of networks me mate got a gig switch and man its fast transfered a 4-5gb game in 3mins

Chalk

what cable are you using?
assuming its ethernet @ 100mb [nic dependant] it should be fairly quick
10 gigs should take 10-20 mins or so [off the top of my head]

google for cerberus ftp server and set up a server and client on each pc,
its much more efficient and reliable than a windows share , especially for large amounts of data,
its also free for home use.

BatThing

See if u wann some fast downloads over a closed lan i think i can help.I think the kind of config u have mentioned is a pretty neat candidate for a very good ftp n/w.Enable ur ftp ports (usually its enabled) and then download AceFTP 3 Pro (get it at http://www.visicommedia.com/).Use this to transfer files,u can do a realtime drag and drop also.Its absolutely free and registration is free too.

Hope it helps ya out.

Kali

We can see each others files but the sharing is very slow.

Sounds like you're using a cheap hub, windows file-sharing itself doesn't really take up that much extra bandwidth (so theres no real benefit from using an ftp-client/server), but large transfers over a hub will slow things down a serious amount. Pick up a 10/100Mbps switch and things should improve no end.

[edit] ftp doesn't offer compression by standard.. so no benefit to that.. but sftp/scp should show a big improvement on slower connections.

Sully

The cables we were using are the yellow ones we get with our modems, lot of us had a good few. Then as backup we had ones which one of the lads seems to have made himself.

Not to sure what the switch was like, ill look into it tho.

So im guessing I dont need to replace all network cards and cables - a better switch should do and use sftp/scp and things should improve?

Cheers guys!

Stephen

I doubt its anything to do with the network cards, sounds more like a hub or crappy switch, as mentioned above.

jor el

I thought the yellow network cables are normally cross-over. You shouldn't be using cross-over if you have a hub, that's for connecting two PCs directly together.

Check all your network cards anyway to make sure they are 10/100 or GB even if they're very new. Then check the hub is also 10/100. If the cabling is very poor quality then that could slow things down too.

DemonOfTheFall

Just grab a 10 euro switch off komplett. If youre using a hub at the moment the difference will be massive. Hubs are pants

Mutant_Fruit

Most modern hubs/switches/routers are auto-sensing, and you can use both crossover and straigh-through cables without a problem.

Whatever you do, make sure you get a switch, and not a hub. A 100meg hub shares the bandwidth between ALL the ports, a 100meg switch has 100megs of dedicated bandwidth per port. This means switches are far superior. All ethernet cards are at least 10/100megabit so long as you got them within the last 3 years or so. So replacing the cards won't make a difference.

As for speed, windows Network Places is just as fast as FTP. There will be no speed benefit from running an FTP server, but FTP might be easier/more suitable for you to use, i don't know. I'd recommend setting up your cmputers in the same workgroup and using network places.

Sully

Well I got the 10/100Mbps switch anyway. Not sure what one we were using, cant get in contact with the chap who brought up the original!

We where looking for the FTP sever thing to make it easier for everyone to see etc.

Mutant_Fruit

If its just for easy-access for a temporary thing, just set up either a DC++ hub (easy enough to do) or an FTP server (even easier to do).

A DC++ hub would be best if multiple people wanted to share folders on their computers so everyone else could access em. Windows filesharing could also be set up for this, but it can be a bugger to start it off initially.

An FTP server would be better if you had one machine with all the files that people wanted to access. Unless you get each person to run an FTP server on their computer and share the files they want that way. (easy enough to set up, but requires installation on each computer).

Sully

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

If its just for easy-access for a temporary thing, just set up either a DC++ hub (easy enough to do) or an FTP server (even easier to do).

A DC++ hub would be best if multiple people wanted to share folders on their computers so everyone else could access em. Windows filesharing could also be set up for this, but it can be a bugger to start it off initially.

DC++ sounds a lot better cause thats more what we plan to do. This is a temp thing - just gonna happen for a few hours on Friday and Saturday!

Sully

"10Gigabytes in optimaly conditions (one cable linking two pcs) will transfer 10 gigabytes in 3 hours. Thats like 1mb per min. its the same as a really fast 8mb broadband connection in optimal conditions and the only way to fix is to replace lan cards and cables."

OK the results I posted in my first test was done without a switch/hub. He just got the cable, connected his PC to the laptop and transfered files. It took him that long using that method. He presumed it would of been the same using a switch. But I discussed everyones comments and suggestions and we are going to use the method of using the switch (like we did the first time, but didnt transfer to much files) and DC++.

Unfortunatley, I received news the house we were gonna use will be taken for the rest of the Summer as of this saturday (parents own it but rent it out, and we used it when it was free) so iv to go on a mission to find a place to rent out for the day!

Anyway, thanks a lot for all your comments, very much appreciated and helped a LOT!

The_B_Man

i had similar trouble with the slowness which I discovered was because i needed to have the NETBEUI protocol installed alongside TCP/IP etc. its on the XP cd or google it if u wanna try it.

deckie27

One more thing
If you are all copying from one to the other at the same time it will really slow it down as each hard drive will be reading and writing at the same time ( it couple be doing a few reads/writes at once)

Dec

po0k

Filezilla server, raid arrays, limit simultaneous logins per IP to 1-2.

Disk I/O will be the limiting factor before 100Mbit network speed if multiple machines are leeching multiple different files from each other. hdd == sequential access, very poor at random seeks.

deckie27

SyxPak

I think thats what i tried to say.
Maybe ??


Dec