how to build a really fast home network

[nekrosoft13]

i might re-image one of my machines, when i was re-installed windows to fix the blu-ray read speed issue, something got screwed up with network.

now that i know how to fix blu-ray issue, i will reimage back to my older installation and working network. i just hope i still have that image

[Monolyth]

Do you run Daemon-Tools nekro?

[nekrosoft13]

not any more, that was causing the blu-ray read issues.

but now i have network issue on new install, so will try to reflash to old image (if i still have it).

network issues is weird, when i send a large file from the machine, to other machine over gigabit file transfer will freeze at random spot. once it freezes i can't close the copy/transfer window.
computer won't reboot or shut down, because that window won't close.

if you know how to fix it let me know

[glObalist]

Did you try

shutdown -f -r -t 01

?

[nekrosoft13]

glObalist, that didn't shut it down either.

well my network transfer freeze issue is solved. never found a solution, but i restored image from 9/12/08, and everything is fine.

tomorrow i might buy two Intel Pro gigabit nics.

[Bman212121]

Check your logs in the event viewer Nekro. I'm still trying to figure out why my Server 2k3 box refuses to work with my Gig nics. It will start a transfer then basically hang the client pc until I can finally kill the transfer. If you look on the logs on the server it's flooded with error messages.

The Intel Pro 1000 are really nice nics. The ones you linked would work well because they are PCI-E. If it were just a PCI card I'd be afraid of the interface bottlenecking your connection.

Also, did you check your settings for that realtek nic and make sure anything like TCP/IP offloading was turned on? Your usage seems quite high. I have a linksys EG1032 that's in a little AMD athlon 1800+ 1GB ram pc running Server 08 and it can get to about 50% network usage before I run out of CPU. You probably have 10x the amount of CPU in that pc than what mine is, so it seems like something isn't setup right.

EDIT: Also look for Flow control for both TX & RX, and Checksum offloading.

[Monolyth]

Originally Posted by Bman212121

Check your logs in the event viewer Nekro. I'm still trying to figure out why my Server 2k3 box refuses to work with my Gig nics. It will start a transfer then basically hang the client pc until I can finally kill the transfer. If you look on the logs on the server it's flooded with error messages.

The Intel Pro 1000 are really nice nics. The ones you linked would work well because they are PCI-E. If it were just a PCI card I'd be afraid of the interface bottlenecking your connection.

Naw, older PCI bus caps @ 133MB/s. Even at full Gigabit speeds you can't fill it. Of course all PCI slots share the same channel which is why PCIe is better.

One thing I found was a huge bottleneck for me on large xfers was simply the storage I was going to. Remember that as you get further into the center of the platter (more used space on the drive, the slower the drive will be. Right around 60-75% is where the drop off normally occurs. This isn't so bad with higher RPM drives as the faster speeds offset the time it takes the head to reach the inner platter. Be sure to run tests on your file-storage to ensure it can handle the load otherwise your system will throttle the connection and you'll get less then expected performance.

[Bman212121]

Originally Posted by Monolyth

Naw, older PCI bus caps @ 133MB/s. Even at full Gigabit speeds you can't fill it. Of course all PCI slots share the same channel which is why PCIe is better.

One thing I found was a huge bottleneck for me on large xfers was simply the storage I was going to. Remember that as you get further into the center of the platter (more used space on the drive, the slower the drive will be. Right around 60-75% is where the drop off normally occurs. This isn't so bad with higher RPM drives as the faster speeds offset the time it takes the head to reach the inner platter. Be sure to run tests on your file-storage to ensure it can handle the load otherwise your system will throttle the connection and you'll get less then expected performance.

Yea that is what I was getting at. If he has anything else using the PCI bus it's going to be saturated in a hurry. 133MBps is just the theoretical limit. After you add overhead I've found it to be exactly 110MBps when I had my RAID controller on it. Nothing like a flatline graph at 110MBps for 95% of the drive test.

[Monolyth]

Yeah that 110MB/s limit sucks, you'll also have TCP processing overhead which will further slow things down. Overall it's near to impossible to get theoretical max on Gigabit even w/Jumbo Frames.

I'm so happy that Server 2k3/2k8 & Vista did away with the SCSIPort xfer limitations in the driver. Though I do wish my preferred RAID card vendor (3Ware) would release StorPort drivers.

[nekrosoft13]

Originally Posted by Bman212121

Check your logs in the event viewer Nekro. I'm still trying to figure out why my Server 2k3 box refuses to work with my Gig nics. It will start a transfer then basically hang the client pc until I can finally kill the transfer. If you look on the logs on the server it's flooded with error messages.

The Intel Pro 1000 are really nice nics. The ones you linked would work well because they are PCI-E. If it were just a PCI card I'd be afraid of the interface bottlenecking your connection.

Also, did you check your settings for that realtek nic and make sure anything like TCP/IP offloading was turned on? Your usage seems quite high. I have a linksys EG1032 that's in a little AMD athlon 1800+ 1GB ram pc running Server 08 and it can get to about 50% network usage before I run out of CPU. You probably have 10x the amount of CPU in that pc than what mine is, so it seems like something isn't setup right.

EDIT: Also look for Flow control for both TX & RX, and Checksum offloading.

well i got the Intel nic in the server now, CPU usage dropped by huge margin. realtek is currently disabled.

but before i did disable it, offloading for every option was on, but cpu usage was still high. problem you are describing is very similar to what i had.

[wollyka]

Sorry to hijack, but does the Cat5 cables wiring needs changing if i want to switch from my 100 mbit switch to 1 Gbps one? thx

[npras42]

I think Cat5e cable is good for something like 100 metres and for longer than that you'd need Cat6. I don't know if the performance tails off as you approach that 100 metre mark though.