Gigabit crossover + Router help

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dentaku

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 27, 2004
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Ive got a SOHO network with everything running into a linksys router, and it works great. But I transfer a lot of big files back and forth between two specific computers, and I want to speed up transfers a bit. One computer has dual gigabit nics on a pci-e interface. the other one has a 10/100 built in and a pci-x gigabit card plugged into a regular pci slot. I made a crossover plugged it up and ran some speed tests. the 100 link through the router got about 8 mb a sec and the 1000 link did about 16 mb a sec. but every time I try to transfer a file the computer sends it over the the 100 connection. I tried bridgeing the connections but the transfer speed went down to about 13 mb a sec. Is there a better way to set this up? also what is limiting my transfer speed? My guess is the pci-x card being forced down to pci speeds but im not sure.
 
So let me see if I understand this -- you want to utilize your GigE connection whenever you transfer files instead of your 100MBps connection?
 
Right. I guess I need to set up load balanceing, or set some sort of routeing to tell it to use the gigabit (or both) when going from computer a to computer b. But when going from computer a to computer c,d, or e to just use the 100 link.
 
Two nics, you should have 2 different networks
like 192.168.0.1 on one and 192.168.1.1 on the other, just connect by ip and not by name:
\\192.168.1.1 or whatever the ip may be over the gigabit network
 
dentaku said:
Ive got a SOHO network with everything running into a linksys router, and it works great. But I transfer a lot of big files back and forth between two specific computers, and I want to speed up transfers a bit. One computer has dual gigabit nics on a pci-e interface. the other one has a 10/100 built in and a pci-x gigabit card plugged into a regular pci slot. I made a crossover plugged it up and ran some speed tests. the 100 link through the router got about 8 mb a sec and the 1000 link did about 16 mb a sec. but every time I try to transfer a file the computer sends it over the the 100 connection. I tried bridgeing the connections but the transfer speed went down to about 13 mb a sec. Is there a better way to set this up? also what is limiting my transfer speed? My guess is the pci-x card being forced down to pci speeds but im not sure.
Click to expand...

Two NICs can be in the same subnet and even share the same IP and mac address, usually you need a program on the host with dual nics that will make one virtual IP or GARP when one fails (in non-load balancing configuration). The switch you plug into should be using an etherchannel to spread the receive traffic between both links.
 
Teaming gigabit NIC's isn't going to give you any performance gains on a workstation machine and OS. Hell your not going to tap one GigE connection. Just run on different networks as suggested or disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP and uncheck file and printer sharing on the internet only machine. Either method should work.
 
You don't use crossover cables for GigE, the NIC takes care of that stuff itself.
 
1. Don't use a crossover cable for Gbit.
2. Don't use load balancing.
3. Setup a seperate subnet for these two cards, and use this subnet to transfer any files you want.
4. If the cards support jumbo packets, use them. This will speed up the transfer rate.

My guess would be:
1. The pci bus is saturated
2. The second machine isn't fast enough to keep up with interrupts(jumbo packets help this)
3. The hard drives won't work any faster. A defrag *could* help some.
 
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