Advice needed. 2nd NIC needed?

lordroy

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Apr 25, 2001
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703
I have a simple network here at home. All the machines have decent NIC in them, I use a Linksys 8 port router. TCP/IP installed in all of them. All can see the others, as I have added secure shares to them. All have been defragged and restarted.

Problem is, I try to transfer a large file (700mb movie) from one machine (MASTER) to another (SERVANT). It will transfer, but it takes 30 minutes or more. Sometimes it will transfer quicker, but usually it takes forever.

What am I doing wrong and what can I do to speed up the transfer process?

I am thinking of doing 2 things.

1) Putting a second NIC in machine(SERVANT), and find some sort of load balancing software.

2) Putting a second NIC in machine(SERVANT), and a second NIC in machine(MASTER), with a crossover cable and its own network shares.

(advice on either of these would be appreciated)

Thanx,

-R
 
lordroy said:
I have a simple network here at home. All the machines have decent NIC in them, I use a Linksys 8 port router. TCP/IP installed in all of them. All can see the others, as I have added secure shares to them. All have been defragged and restarted.

Problem is, I try to transfer a large file (700mb movie) from one machine (MASTER) to another (SERVANT). It will transfer, but it takes 30 minutes or more. Sometimes it will transfer quicker, but usually it takes forever.

What am I doing wrong and what can I do to speed up the transfer process?

I am thinking of doing 2 things.

1) Putting a second NIC in machine(SERVANT), and find some sort of load balancing software.

2) Putting a second NIC in machine(SERVANT), and a second NIC in machine(MASTER), with a crossover cable and its own network shares.

(advice on either of these would be appreciated)

Thanx,

-R

Sounds like things are working exactly as they should. Best way to make it faster - upgrade your nic's and switch to gigabit.
 
Bah, There's definately a problem there... Especially if your "30 minutes or more" isn't an exaggeration. I'd look to see that both master and slave autodetected @ 100mbps, then verift the wiring between them and the router is sound. Barring any wiring or detection issues, is either the master or the slave an older PC?

Might also try changing ports around on the router too...
 
Nate7311 said:
Bah, There's definately a problem there... Especially if your "30 minutes or more" isn't an exaggeration. I'd look to see that both master and slave autodetected @ 100mbps, then verift the wiring between them and the router is sound. Barring any wiring or detection issues, is either the master or the slave an older PC?

Might also try changing ports around on the router too...


OK, ok, you're right. I didn't do the math and was trying to remember the last time I was moving large ammounts of data around. I was moving gigs and thats why it took ~30min to transfer. If it really is taking 30 min to move 700 megs that is slow depending on the some other factors. Moving lots of little files that total 700 megs can take over 30 min. due to the stopping and starting.

Anyway, do as above and check the link lights and such to make sure you're operating at 100 and not 10.
 
Everything is running @ 100. The 100 link lights are on. No one on the network is running 10s.

I bounced the ports around. Reset the Router. Rebooted both machines. Disabled all programs running in background (only thing was AV & Clock. It was still taking 30+ minutes to move a 700mb file.

Of course I got fed up with it, and went and did something else. When I came back to the computer, and turned it back on, I tried again. This time it took 4 min.

This sort of thing happens all the time. It is not the quality of my 3com NIC. I dont believe it is the quality of my Linksys router. The machines are 2g, 2g, 1.7g & 1.4g. All of the disks are 7200 RPM and the motherboard/controllers are name brand.

The only thing I question is M$ 2000 Pro/Server. Is there any way to get better speed between 2 computers. Will either of the above suggestions help me out (see original post).

I really only need (SERVANT) to be quick to (MASTER).

-R
 
To get to the bottom of your problem, you'll need to do some troubleshooting.

What results do you get from PING or TRACERT?

How are you doing name resolution?

How are you copying the files? Are you dragging and dropping in Windows Explorer, or copying inside a command window? With a drive that's attached with NET USE? Or did you browse to the other machine using a UNC name?

When things are going slow, look at the network throughput meter in task manager. What's it show? Always slow, or does it bounce up and down?

Using PerfMon, are you seeeing any error packets or resent packets? How often?

How did you eliminate the 3Com adapter as being an issue?

.B ekiM
 
mikeblas said:
To get to the bottom of your problem, you'll need to do some troubleshooting.

What results do you get from PING or TRACERT?

<10ms

mikeblas said:
How are you doing name resolution?

How are you copying the files? Are you dragging and dropping in Windows Explorer, or copying inside a command window? With a drive that's attached with NET USE? Or did you browse to the other machine using a UNC name?

I can drag the files in Windows Explorer, or use a command window. Either way the same results.

mikeblas said:
When things are going slow, look at the network throughput meter in task manager. What's it show? Always slow, or does it bounce up and down?

It shows it being slow and steady most of the time.

mikeblas said:
Using PerfMon, are you seeeing any error packets or resent packets? How often?

Not used "PerfMon" before, explain...

mikeblas said:
How did you eliminate the 3Com adapter as being an issue?

I have 6 different machines here. All of them have had the same problem. 4/6 have 3Com. One is using an onboard Gb adapter. One is using another off brand. They have all had regular replacements and upkeep, usually a new adapter or at least a different one from time to time. This has been happening for quite some time. It has also happened on different network/router.

I think it must be some sort of delay within the microsoft file transfer management. I cannot reproduce it regularlly, and it is very annoying.

Again, would a second NIC help (with either some sort of load balancing software or a direct crossover cable between the 2 computers)?

-R
 
Check the duplex settings and verify that there isn't a speed/duplex mismatch. Its also possible that one of your NICs is dying.

Ok, just reread your last post. Is this happening with multiple machines, or just with one specifically?
 
Full duplex on all machines.

Currently I have:

1) Main/Game Machine (Win2kPro) (MASTER)
2) File/Printserver (Win2kServer) (SERVANT)
3) Work Machine (Win2kPro) (CONCUBINE)
4) Laptop (Win2kPro) (GOPHER)

They are all hooked to a Linksys 8port router (wired). (this was recently sent to Linksys for quality testing, and it should not be the problem).
SERVANT & CONCUBINE are using 10/100 3Com NICs. MASTER is using onboard 10/100/1000 NIC. GOPHER is using onboard 10/100 NIC.

All machines have TCP/IP, NETBEUI, IPX/SPX/NETBIOS, Network Monitor, and File & Print sharing protocalls enabled. Each machine has its IP address specified (xxx.xxx.xxx.1 - xxx.xxx.xxx.4).


I use MASTER to download things most of the time, sometimes I use CONCUBINE. I tend to get large (700+mb) files from time to time. When I am transfering these files to SERVANT for storage, sometimes it takes 3-5 minutes while other times (more often than that I would like) it takes 20-30 minutes. Again, I cannot re-create this problem on demand, as it happens sometimes and sometimes it does not.

-R
 
What I was getting at is does the issue only happen with one particular machine in the picture. Or to be more precise, has the issue been limited to one PC in particular? If that were the case, this would make things a bit easier to troubleshoot.

Also, have you looked at replacing the cables, or at the minimum checked for loose connectors/pins?
 
BobSutan said:
What I was getting at is does the issue only happen with one particular machine in the picture. Or to be more precise, has the issue been limited to one PC in particular? If that were the case, this would make things a bit easier to troubleshoot.

Also, have you looked at replacing the cables, or at the minimum checked for loose connectors/pins?

It happens with MASTER or CONCUBINE sending to SERVANT.

All of the cables are new, CAT5e HQ patch cables made by COMPAQ (for servers). All connectors/pins are tight & sound.

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. I used to be on another (work) network where the transfer rates were varied like this.

If anyone knows how/what software can be used to do loadbalancing on one machine with 2 NICs, I would love to hear.

-R
 
Well then, it looks liek SERVANT is your problem child. But judging from your description of what's going on I'm leaning towards Servant not having the horsepower to simply handle the load. If that's the case, two NICs won't do you any good since network throughput woudlnt' be the issue. Have you ever sat down and tested this machine's performance capabilities? What is the system's specs?
 
BobSutan said:
Well then, it looks liek SERVANT is your problem child. But judging from your description of what's going on I'm leaning towards Servant not having the horsepower to simply handle the load. If that's the case, two NICs won't do you any good since network throughput woudlnt' be the issue. Have you ever sat down and tested this machine's performance capabilities? What is the system's specs?

SERVANT:

OS: Microsoft Windows 2000 Server 5.0.2195 w/Service Pack 4
CPU Type: AMD Athlon-PECM, 1700 MHz
Motherboard Name: Asus A7V133 (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 1 AMR, 3 DIMM)
Motherboard Chipset: VIA VT8363A Apollo KT133A
System Memory: 256 MB (PC133 SDRAM)
IDE Controller: VIA Bus Master IDE Controller
SCSI/RAID Controller: Win2000 Promise Ultra100 (tm) IDE Controller (PDC20265)

6 WD 40Gb HDs (12 Partitions total each @ 20Gb)

Guess I could up the memory and mess around with the JBOD Partitions.

But I dont think that it should have such a problem with a single transfer at a time. All it is doing is moving data from one machine to another.



-R
 
You might want to check the hard drive on SERVANT. It seems like your network is ok.
I would do the following.

1: Assure the controller is running in ATA mode, not PIO mode
2: Check the fragmentation of the drive, defrag if its bad.
3: Benchmark the drive with something like HD tach and assure its transferring ok consitantly and not in the process of dying.
4: Open the take manager and watch the mem load and cpu load when a network file transfer is occuring.

Other network troubleshooting I would try:

1: Move the NIC to another PCI slot and see if that helps.
2: Do a "ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -n 1000" and see if you get any loss what so ever over a period of time.
3: Try another port on the switch, Switch it out with a known working port and see what happens.

This really sounds like a local hardware issue on SERVANT to me though.
 
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