Improving network speed

[mjz_5]

Server Specs:

PIII 866 - Asus CUSL2C - Crucial 256 SDRAM - SIS Trio Video Card - Linksys Gb NIC - 2x80GB Segates | 200GB WD SE | 200GB Seagate

When I transfer a large file from my server to one of my computers, I usually get an average of 17 MB (~170kB) per second. Is there any way I can improve the speed? Running NetCPS (network speed tester), it averages 30 MB/sec (~300kB). So I know everything seems to be okay on the network side of things. As for the hard drives on the server, when I transfer files between them, it’s quick, so I am assuming that the hard drives are not the bottle neck.

Any suggestions and/or comments to improve the speed?

Thanks

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Your best bet would be going with a gigabit switch and NICs for your computers. You're not going to be able to max out your hard drive's read and write speeds with a 10 or 100 base T connection.

Edit I see your server has a gigbit NIC in it, do you have a gigabit switch, cat6 cable, and a gigabit card in the client computer?

 

[mjz_5]

Your best bet would be going with a gigabit switch and NICs for your computers. You're not going to be able to max out your hard drive's read and write speeds with a 10 or 100 base T connection.

Edit I see your server has a gigbit NIC in it, do you have a gigabit switch, cat6 cable, and a gigabit card in the client computer?

yes, i have a linksys gigabit switch and all clients have linksys gigabit nics ... j

 

[Scheizekopf]

yes, i have a linksys gigabit switch and all clients have linksys gigabit nics ... j

Linksys Gbit NICs are good. I've had good luck with them.

What model linksys switch?
What kind of cabling?

 

[mjz_5]

Linksys Gbit NICs are good. I've had good luck with them.

What model linksys switch?
What kind of cabling?

i'm using a Instant Gigabit 8-Port Workgroup Switch (#EG008W) with category 5E cables.

 

[LonerVamp]

You won't be able to begin to use all of a gigabit link with a Windows server. Your bottleneck will be the OS. You would need to move up to a Solaris or even a Linux server to begin to even justify gig-e.

 

[mjz_5]

You won't be able to begin to use all of a gigabit link with a Windows server. Your bottleneck will be the OS. You would need to move up to a Solaris or even a Linux server to begin to even justify gig-e.

ooo Serious. Windows 2000 can't handle gigabit correctly, this sucks

 

[j4zzee]

You won't be able to begin to use all of a gigabit link with a Windows server. Your bottleneck will be the OS. You would need to move up to a Solaris or even a Linux server to begin to even justify gig-e.

I have experience with several servers that are Windows based running on a SAN with 2GB fiber channel HBAs and with 1GB NICs. They fly... and fully utilize their respective links. I don't think I can agree with your assertion.

 

[mjz_5]

well, i am just gonna go all out and hopefully the speeds improve..

I'm gonna be building a new server, going to use the current one for data backup.

Linksys Instant Gigabit PCI64 Nic Adapter (#EG1064)
Tyan Tiger MPX 2466N-4M Dual AMD MP DDR
2x = Barracuda 7200.7 SATA150 200G 8M 7200rpm (#ST3200822AS) RAID 0
2x = AMD 2400+ MP CPUs
HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 1820A 64BIT PCI-X SATA RAID CONTROLLER 8 DEVICE
3x = KINGSTON PC2700 512MB DDR ECC REG 184 MEMORY MODULE

running on windows 2000 server

 

[Orinthical]

There is nothing wrong with the Windows platform for Gigabit and before I get attacked for saying there's "nothing" wrong, just take it with a grain of salt. =) I'm not a Microsoft zealot, *NIX has its place... but blaming network congestion or lack of throughput solely on the NOS is reckless and the easy-way-out.

No offense of course.

What makes Gigabit effective is large/giant/jumbo frames support, otherwise it's just about as slow as any other networking equipment. Make sure your equipment supports this feature and then go about enabling it and resetting your mtu values on all your clients.

You also have to consider whether or not your server is RAID or simply running off it's base IO backplane. If you do not have a RAID setup with good cache than your network IO is relative to near exlusively to the disk IO and in most cases, it cannot keep up even with base SCSI, let alone IDE.

Just because you can copy files from one hard drive to another doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to serving those files over the network. Try my suggestions above and maybe things will improve... or maybe I'm just telling you stuff you've already tried. =)

Furthermore, unless you're absolutely sold on that HighPoint controller, I'd recommend you look a RAID controller with a dedicated logic/parity chip like the Promise S150 SX4 below instead of the "just the basics" controller than PocketRAID will give you. If you don't have any spare SDRAM laying around for cache you could either buy some or get the S150 SX4-M, which comes with 64MB ECC memory onboard. The regular SX4 will allow up to 256MB of ECC or non-ECC SDRAM as cache.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=112&familyId=2

Hope that helps,

 

[mjz_5]

There is nothing wrong with the Windows platform for Gigabit and before I get attacked for saying there's "nothing" wrong, just take it with a grain of salt. =) I'm not a Microsoft zealot, *NIX has its place... but blaming network congestion or lack of throughput solely on the NOS is reckless and the easy-way-out.

No offense of course.

What makes Gigabit effective is large/giant/jumbo frames support, otherwise it's just about as slow as any other networking equipment. Make sure your equipment supports this feature and then go about enabling it and resetting your mtu values on all your clients.

You also have to consider whether or not your server is RAID or simply running off it's base IO backplane. If you do not have a RAID setup with good cache than your network IO is relative to near exlusively to the disk IO and in most cases, it cannot keep up even with base SCSI, let alone IDE.

Just because you can copy files from one hard drive to another doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to serving those files over the network. Try my suggestions above and maybe things will improve... or maybe I'm just telling you stuff you've already tried. =)

Furthermore, unless you're absolutely sold on that HighPoint controller, I'd recommend you look a RAID controller with a dedicated logic/parity chip like the Promise S150 SX4 below instead of the "just the basics" controller than PocketRAID will give you. If you don't have any spare SDRAM laying around for cache you could either buy some or get the S150 SX4-M, which comes with 64MB ECC memory onboard. The regular SX4 will allow up to 256MB of ECC or non-ECC SDRAM as cache.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=112&familyId=2

Hope that helps,

cool thanks, i'll definitely be getting the S150 SX4-M

. i don't think my linksys nics and/or switch support jumbo frames.. will look into it.

 

[Orinthical]

The S150 SX4/SX4-M recommendation was based on the fact that, that HighPoint controller was SATA. If you don't want/need to go SATA then I'd recommend getting the SX4000 for up to 4 drives or the SX6000 controller by Promise for up to six drives.

I have the SX4000lite (designed for 33mhz PCI bus operation versus 66/133 PCI-X) in my server at home and simply cannot say enough good things about it thus far.

I had considered the PocketRAID solution from HighPoint at one time as well until research yielded that it was using the host CPU for parity calculations instead of its own onboard processor. That was a mistake for HighPoint imho and re-affirmed my faith in going with the Promise controller.

And about Jumbo Frames -- if your network equipment doesn't support them then you're pretty much stuck at 10/100 speeds, regardless of whether it autonegs at Gigabit. That's something they don't usually tell you when they sell you the product unfortunately.

As for your server NIC choice, I'd look into the Intel PRO/1000 Server NIC's -- I use them and love them, and frankly they are not that much more expensive than the others, especially given that they fully support Jumbo Frames with up to 16128 MTU.

For your server you might consider purchasing one of the dual port (or two seperate cards) and using the PROset software to setup an Adaptive Load Balancing team.