How do I increase network transfer speeds?

[Chellexelle]

I recently built a media server and am getting transfer rates of about 70MB/s between my server and PC which is better then transfer rates between an external drive and my PC but is far below what my server is capable of so I was wondering if putting a new card like THIS in each machine would allow me to achieve transfer speeds of over 300MB/s or whatever the limit of my server would be or would I need a 10GB card like THIS and lastly, would I also need to buy a new router?

 

[devman]

The raw transfer rate of Gigabit Ethernet maxes out at 125MB/s (119 MiB/s). That is before you take out Frame overhead, IP overhead, and TCP overhead (and any application layer overhead if any). 10G would speed it up, but you'd need it switches that support it or direct connections between 10G hosts to realize that kind of speed.

 

[Cerulean]

Wrap tin foil around the full length of the data cable. It must be tin, not aluminum!

 

[Chellexelle]

Thanks devman, that was helpful.

 

[MrGuvernment]

how many streams are you going out at once?

Why do you need more than 70MB/s, even full 1080HD wont use 70MBs

If your streaming to more than one device, multiple GIG NIC's set up in teaming will allow more devices to stream at once.

 

[Liger88]

Leaving out a ton of details that make answering the question very difficult. Guessing you're using integrated ports already and not add-in cards? If both ends are Intel based you're probably in good shape already. If any are Realtek that would probably explain things a little.

Also a lot depends on what you're transferring over the network. Smaller files tend to have a much harder time maxing out throughput than large consistent files do. Which brings up the hard drives. Those big, cheap, power saving drives often times aren't the best when it comes to read/writes and it gets amplified over a network.

Router should have zero effect on transfers between server > media center so long as both are on the same network and the same switch. If the switch is cheap (most consumer gear is) it might not be rated as true to the ethernet spec as you'd think. The backplane often times is heavily neglected.

 

[Chellexelle]

The raw transfer rate of Gigabit Ethernet maxes out at 125MB/s (119 MiB/s).

If these network adapters are being advertised as "gigabit" and capable of speeds of 1000Mbps then shouldn't I be getting that or close to that speed which the integrated controllers on my motherboards or those $30 cards are advertised as?

how many streams are you going out at once?

Why do you need more than 70MB/s, even full 1080HD wont use 70MBs

If your streaming to more than one device, multiple GIG NIC's set up in teaming will allow more devices to stream at once.

I only have my server connected to one device. This is for music and videos and I have many many terabytes to transfer over from external hard drives. I know my setup works fine, I just want to be able to transfer files, no matter how often that is, at a decent speed which to me is at least 300MB/s.

Leaving out a ton of details that make answering the question very difficult. Guessing you're using integrated ports already and not add-in cards? If both ends are Intel based you're probably in good shape already. If any are Realtek that would probably explain things a little.

I am sorry, I thought I provided all the information needed. My router is D-Link DIR-655, my PC has an integrated Realtek Controller which I think is RTL8168 and server motherboard has an Intel i210AT dual port controller and a Realtek RTL8211E PHY controller. I am not sure which one I am using, probably the Intel controller.

 

[runs2far]

If these network adapters are being advertised as "gigabit" and capable of speeds of 1000Mbps then shouldn't I be getting that or close to that speed which the integrated controllers on my motherboards or those $30 cards are advertised as?

Network speed are in bits, windows shows in bytes, you need 8 bits for one byte so ....

1000 mbit/second / 8 = 125 megabyte/second.

That's the maximum in theory, now add Frame overhead, IP overhead, and TCP overhead (and any application layer overhead if any), as mentioned by devman and you loose some speed.

Running on Realtek stuff and maybe having some latency on the HDDs, which you haven't described yet, and then 70 megabyte / second shouldn't be far of.

EDIT:
I do not know how fast the external drives are, but have you even checked they can transfer at +100 mbyte/s to your PC?

 

[jimmer411]

If these network adapters are being advertised as "gigabit" and capable of speeds of 1000Mbps then shouldn't I be getting that or close to that speed which the integrated controllers on my motherboards or those $30 cards are advertised as?



I only have my server connected to one device. This is for music and videos and I have many many terabytes to transfer over from external hard drives. I know my setup works fine, I just want to be able to transfer files, no matter how often that is, at a decent speed which to me is at least 300MB/s.



I am sorry, I thought I provided all the information needed. My router is D-Link DIR-655, my PC has an integrated Realtek Controller which I think is RTL8168 and server motherboard has an Intel i210AT dual port controller and a Realtek RTL8211E PHY controller. I am not sure which one I am using, probably the Intel controller.

Do you have an HDD setup capable of transferring 300MB/s? Your rarely going to get more than 70MB/s using a single 7200RPM drive in each machine. I burst transfer 185MB/s from SSD to a 10K raptor on my server and sustain 90MB/s for larger transfers. I can easily sustain 250MB/s from SSD to SSD.