Slow File Transfering over a Home Lan

stackeye

Hi

I want to be able to save large files onto another computer over a home network, I have two machines, a laptop(MS 2003) and a pc(Vista Home), they are both wired through an Eircom netopia router, when moving files across I get about 1 meg a second, shouldn't I be getting much faster than this???, I had both set to 100 full but then changed back to Auto cause it made no difference, is there something else I am missing, do I need a switch between the machines cause the eircom netopia router is rubbish??

I would appreciate any help

Thanks

degsie

You could try to connect both pc directly using a crossover cable and see what speeds you get. Might be the Netopia or just some configuration settings on you nic.

mastermind2005

Step 1. ping machine A. from machine B.

Step 2. try systematically disabling antivirus / firewall ect and retry ping

step 3. (If required) connect computers directly via crossover cable and try pinging again.

Process of illimination... Let us know how you get on:p

ethernet

There were patches released for Vista to improve transfer speeds. I'd suggest you install them.

monkey tennis

mastermind2005 wrote:

Step 1. ping machine A. from machine B.

Step 2. try systematically disabling antivirus / firewall ect and retry ping

step 3. (If required) connect computers directly via crossover cable and try pinging again.

Process of illimination... Let us know how you get on:p

These are all completely pointless. Ping won't show you the bandwidth available, and it's already been established that connectivity is there.

Chances are it's the Netopia - step 1 should be using a crossover cable, with the new Vista drivers as step 2. No pings needed.

mastermind2005

monkey tennis you stand corrected.

You will find pinging any type of compatible node will give you response time in milliseconds.

You mention bandwith available? what the hell are you talking about ?

of course its gonna be 100mbps or even 1000mbps

the idea of pinging esablishes not only connection but responce time and that way you can find out by way of elimination!

whipped!

monkey tennis

mastermind2005 wrote:

You will find pinging any type of compatible node will give you response time in milliseconds.

Response time is a measurement of latency. Latency is not bandwidth, and has practically nothing to do with file transfer rate.

mastermind2005 wrote:

You mention bandwith available? what the hell are you talking about ?

of course its gonna be 100mbps or even 1000mbps

Wrong.

Bandwidth is related to transfer rate. The effective bandwidth between two nodes will depend on the performance of the NICs, the drivers used, and the duplex setting at both ends. It's entirely possible that the hub/switch built into the Netopia is set to (or negotiates at) half-duplex, which will seriously affect file transfers due to collisions.

Let's go through your suggestions: Pinging machine A from machine B (or vice versa) achieves nothing. Disabling firewalls and anti-virus will also achieve nothing, as we have already established NBT connectivity. Connecting directly using a crossover cable is the only useful piece of advice (bypassing any possible bottleneck in the hub/switch), but was already given by another poster, and you follow it up with another pointless ping (we already know that layer 3+ connectivity is there). You clearly don't have any depth of networking knowledge.

mastermind2005 wrote:

whipped!

You've just made yourself look like even more of an idiot.

mastermind2005

You gas

What does the ms that’s displayed when you send a ping stand for ? its the time in milliseconds it take for the ping packet to return to its original source....

So if i ping a pc on a lan and i get a major delay that doesn’t mean anything?

would you wakeup and cop on to yourself!.

"Bandwidth is related to transfer rate" Duh.....

"we already know that layer 3+" what are you trying to sound like.. FFS of course all the layers are gonna be working Jesus Christ.... he can send the file its speed that’s the problem...

I could be wrong but your trying to say its the network that has the problem, its bet 100 quid its nothing to do with the physical network, ive problems like this plenty of times and often its AV software filtering packets im not saying its defiantly that but .......... ITS A PROCESS OF ILLIMINATION

Now go back to bed:D

Cake Fiend

Joanne, don't feed the trolls

Mastermind (ironic name), the more you post, the more you demonstrate you don't have a bog what you're talking about. The 'ms' as you expertly put it shows the latency between hosts (look it up if you don't understand it), which as monkey tennis has already explained has nothing to do with transfer rate.

If you see there are no problems above layer 3, then why are you recommending a ping? Ping works at layer 3. It's not going to help you diagnose a NetBios transfer rate problem (again, look it up if you don't understand it).

You keep going on about the AV software 'filtering packets', can you explain how that would cause file transfer slowdown? A packet filter will either block or pass a packet, it won't slow it down. We know the traffic is flowing, so this clearly isn't the problem. For what it's worth, I'd agree with monkey tennis that the most likely culprit is the switch, which could be proven/disproven by using a crossover cable and making sure the NICs are negotiating at 100/full, or manually setting them to that if necessary.

You gave worthless advice, you were called on it by an experienced network admin, and instead of letting it go, you got upset and tried to defend your incorrect statements. Now you're in a hole, are you going to keep digging? (If you are, please at least get hold of a dictionary)

mastermind2005

No your fine, you and your friend who knows everything can keep blaming it on the hardware.

Can the OP let us know what the solutio is when you find out.

:rolleyes:

degsie

stackeye wrote:

I would appreciate any help

Com'on stackeye, put us out of our misery :rolleyes:

Alun

As 'monkey tennis' says, a single ping means nothing in this case. We know there's connectivity at layer 3, that's not the problem, it's throughput. A network with mismatched duplex clients, a cable with split pairs and all kinds of other borderline physical faults will often appear perfectly OK with a single ping, assuming everything's properly configured at layer 3, but put it under any kind of load and you'll see so many low-level Ethernet errors you'll wonder how anything gets through at all.

If there is a problem with duplex mismatches or suchlike the only use ping can be is if you do something like 'ping -t -l 1500' or something like that .. you can pretty much guarantee you'll see loads of packet losses then.

GerardKeating

stackeye wrote:

Hi

I want to be able to save large files onto another computer over a home network, I have two machines, a laptop(MS 2003) and a pc(Vista Home), they are both wired through an Eircom netopia router, when moving files across I get about 1 meg a second, shouldn't I be getting much faster than this???, I had both set to 100 full but then changed back to Auto cause it made no difference, is there something else I am missing, do I need a switch between the machines cause the eircom netopia router is rubbish??

I would appreciate any help

Thanks

Item 3 in this article improved things a lot for me.

stackeye

Well I got myself a hold of a crossover cable and its all down to vista,

2003 laptop - XP desktop - 5megs\s, same both ways

2003 laptop - Vista desktop - 4.6megs\s over Lan
2003 laptop - Vista desktop - 4.6megs\s with cross-over

Now when I transfer files from Vista to my 2003 laptop with the crossover it goes to ****, takes ages with the "calculating" then get about 700kbs to 1 meg, its fine sending files to Vista just not transferring out, I have the microsoft patches installed and I tried solution 3 from the link that GerardKeating posted,

Vista Is Rubbish

Is 5 megs OK speed when I have fast ethernet cards in both machines?

Thanks for all the help lads

stackeye

After doing more testing now that I know its nothing to do with my Router I have discovered that its alot to do with my NIC drivers and the McAgfee Antivirus software but mostly its VISTA, I have updated my Nic Drivers and uninstalled Mcagfee Firewall but that has only speeded up file transfers to vista from another machines - copying from vista to anywhere is still really crap, Im going to install XP, Vista should be avoided like AIDS

mastermind2005

lol @ monkey tennis

lol @ cake fiend

lol @ alun

care to comment......

Mastermind wins again :eek:

monkey tennis

mastermind2005 wrote:

care to comment......

Mastermind wins again :eek:

Point out where pinging helps?

mastermind2005

No i wont. go learn some stuff yourself.

Hint: "the McAgfee Antivirus software"

monkey tennis

mastermind2005 wrote:

No i wont. go learn some stuff yourself.

It was a rhetorical question, kid. Pinging doesnt help here. And it's already been explained why a firewall will not affect data transfer rate.

Hint:

stackeye wrote:

I have updated my Nic Drivers

OP, you should still get a higher transfer rate than 5MB/s between 2003/XP systems on a crossover cable, make sure both NICs are running at full duplex. Also, did you make sure that both NICs were running at 100Mb under Vista? 1MB/s would be about right for a 10Mb connection.

mastermind2005

lol @ monkey tennis


"It was a rhetorical question, kid. Pinging doesnt help here"

lol

you think you know it all dont you - silly little fool

_CreeD_

I've seen cases where a host IPS has slowed network transfers by up to 50% but that would not affect outgoing traffic.
Have you checked CPU usage while you're doing file transfers? Onboard NICs are little more than physical interfaces and a codec, the host CPU/Driver does most of the actual work. CPU usage can be quite high (on a dual-core 2.6Ghz opteron my 1GB NIC averaging 20% utilisation (about 25MB/s) uses around 40% CPU time). If your CPU spikes to 100%, and you can't see a similar spike in any single process outside of Explorer then I would definitely think driver, if it was something bizarre happening with a Firewall/Security app. you'd see that process spike.
It's possible the transmit pins on the Vista PC NIC could be dodgy, maybe the null paired pin is buggered so you get an increase in EMI on output. It could transmit enough to maintain TCP ack.s for incoming but be too bad for an efficient flow outgoing. Possible but no real way to check without adding a new NIC.

And Mastermind this isn't the special olympics, you were wrong accept it. Actually try and redeem yourself, there IS a way whereby latency affects throughput (though it obviously does not apply here), what is it....don't be shy, hell I already gave you a hint.

FruitLover

mastermind2005 wrote:

you think you know it all dont you - silly little fool

lol

Is he wrong? No. Are you? Yes, and it's been shown by several people. Who's the fool now? This isn't the thunderdome...

mastermind2005

Eh FruitLover i tought monkey tennis was a girl?

anyway the main debate was over hardware vs software more or less.. to which i was more accurate. so in that respect im right, simple as

too many book lovers here trying to show off what they learned in school. The reason im standing over what im saying is ive seen this problem before in a similar setup, and rather than trying to use everything i know about harware / software in theory its more often better to keep things simple and apply lessons learned from actual experience.

:rolleyes:

monkey tennis

'He' is indeed a 'she'.

They didn't teach computer networking back when I was in school, I learnt what I know through almost 10 years of hands-on work and study.

mastermind2005 wrote:

anyway the main debate was over hardware vs software more or less

No. It began with you telling the OP to use ping to diagnose a LAN transfer rate issue, misunderstanding the function of the ping program (it's for testing connectivity and latency, neither of which were an issue here). Ping was redundant in the OP's method of improvement. The debate continued because you tried to cover up your lack of knowlege with bluster and insults, rather than gracefully accepting a correction.

Hush now, child.

mastermind2005

im telling you here and now... take note

if you have Pc - A and Pc - B

ping Pc - B from Pc -A and if B has a standard install of certin antivirus software you will see a lag in the responce time simply because of packet filtering its basically monitoring network traffic and delaying it in the process, he said it himself disabeling the antivirus software helped! you cant argue with that.:o

monkey tennis

mastermind2005 wrote:

he said it himself disabeling the antivirus software helped! you cant argue with that.:o

I see you're conveniently leaving out the fact that he updated his NIC drivers at the same time (as recommended in my very first post on this thread, and by 'ethernet' before me).

And you're still talking about latency, which (as has been explained several times) is unrelated to transfer rate. Aren't you taking notes?

SouperComputer

Reverting to XP, tempting as it might be is probably not really nessaccary.

edit this registry key (source):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\LMCompatibilityLevel

It controls the security level mandated or allowed for logins. In Vista it defaults to 0x3, which means "NTLMv2 only". This is not supported by Samba, or at least not supported by any of the Samba servers I use (Mac OS X, Debian Sarge, or Buffalo TeraStation). This is despite the fact that the Samba documentation implies that it should work.

The fix is to change it to 0x1, which means "use NTLMv2 if available, or older versions if not." Reboot. Samba shares will work just fine.

Although you are not running SAMBA on 2003 per-se, you may still be having NTLM v2 issues. NTLM may seem like its just an authenication issue, but IME it can cause significant and horrific performance slowdowns with file transfers.

HTH

FruitLover

Sorry monkey! Just assumed you were a dude

Haha mastermind, schooled on networking by a girl! Hate that

mastermind2005

Who asked you?

Youve just appologised and then re-insulted monkey tennis

:rolleyes: what more can i say.

good luck sunshine

FruitLover

Public forum mate. Noone needs to ask me.

But, I do love seeing a smarmy git get their comeuppance

mastermind2005

Ha sure you done have a clue what your talking about did you even read the thread properly