Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Browse this.jtr1962 said:
Suggestions for hooking up cable internet
- Thread starter jtr1962
- Start date
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks Fushigi. That came in handy. Internet connection sharing worked for all the machines with no problem but file transfers were a little more problematic. Once I got the computers to see each other over the network (which unfortunately is not explained in that document), it was relatively easy to get them to share files. In fact, I'm even sharing the printer on my bedroom PC. My mom can print files from her PC in the basement on my printer. :mrgrn:
The only thing I'm a bit concerned over are the lackluster transfer speeds. I'm getting around 3.3 MB/sec transferring files between machines. I'm sure the 200 MHz speed of my mom's machine may be a factor there but I'd think I should be doing better than that over a 100 Mbs network (I was expecting ~10 to 11 MB/sec). Even allowing 15% for overhead, I'm only getting maybe 30 Mbs. The total cable length (3 cables) between machines is 44 feet, and there are six plugs/jacks involved. A 3-foot cable goes from my router to the wall jack in my bedroom, a 35-foot cable goes the back of the wall jack to the back of the wall jack in the basement, and a 6-foot length completes the run from the basement wall jack to my mom's PC. All cables/jacks are rated Cat5E (supposedly good for GbE). Granted, there are undoubtably losses here, but I must be missing something. BTW, no plans to upgrade to GbE any time soon but I figured since I'm only doing this once I might as well have the cable infrastructure ready. Given that I won't be transferring large amounts of data regularly over the network the speed problem is mostly academic at this point but I would like some tips on what I may have configured incorrectly.
The only thing I'm a bit concerned over are the lackluster transfer speeds. I'm getting around 3.3 MB/sec transferring files between machines. I'm sure the 200 MHz speed of my mom's machine may be a factor there but I'd think I should be doing better than that over a 100 Mbs network (I was expecting ~10 to 11 MB/sec). Even allowing 15% for overhead, I'm only getting maybe 30 Mbs. The total cable length (3 cables) between machines is 44 feet, and there are six plugs/jacks involved. A 3-foot cable goes from my router to the wall jack in my bedroom, a 35-foot cable goes the back of the wall jack to the back of the wall jack in the basement, and a 6-foot length completes the run from the basement wall jack to my mom's PC. All cables/jacks are rated Cat5E (supposedly good for GbE). Granted, there are undoubtably losses here, but I must be missing something. BTW, no plans to upgrade to GbE any time soon but I figured since I'm only doing this once I might as well have the cable infrastructure ready. Given that I won't be transferring large amounts of data regularly over the network the speed problem is mostly academic at this point but I would like some tips on what I may have configured incorrectly.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Once you try to go faster than standard Ethernet (10Mbps), things start to get fussy with wiring and connections. How you connect the wires to the jacks, and the wires to the RJ-45 plugs is really important. I'll assume you already know this and have done things right.
Configuration (for the network cards): the default is usually "Auto negotiate", which seldom works like it should; use the drop down box and change the option to 100 Mbps. Also make sure the card configs say "Full-deplex". These two settings will need to be checked on every PC on the network, of course.
It's been a long day and I'm dead tired. My brain is running super slow, so I can't think of anything else at the moment
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Configuration (for the network cards): the default is usually "Auto negotiate", which seldom works like it should; use the drop down box and change the option to 100 Mbps. Also make sure the card configs say "Full-deplex". These two settings will need to be checked on every PC on the network, of course.
It's been a long day and I'm dead tired. My brain is running super slow, so I can't think of anything else at the moment
.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
I've postsed some results on 100MBit ethernet SMB file transfers here before 11MB/sec is almost unatainable.. 10MB/sec is a very high goal. With pII/pIII equipment you shouldnt expect to reach >9MB/sec and with a pMMX expect about 6-7MB/sec max.
Autonegotiate almost always works perfectly in my experience. I've only had a single NIC had any problem with auto negotiate. It was where it auto negotiated to half duplex when full duplex operation was possible. This was because the NIC was set to do this on purpose. (old ISA 3com NIC)
There are some things you can do to test as well as improve performance.
1) you can test with netperf, but it doesnt accurately reflect what you'll get out of SMB transfers. Directions should be either here or at SR, i've posted several times on netperf.
2) eliminate unneeded adapters and protocols. For internet/lan access and file sharing you should need TCP/IP, but do not need netBEUI or IPX/SPX. If they are installed remove them.
You will obviously need your NIC, but will not need dialup or VPN adapters. Remove them. You can also uninstall dialup networking from the windows setup tab of add/rem programs. This has noticable sped up win9x computers general performance in my experience.
3) Drivers are everything with NICs. Make sure you have up to date drivers.
Autonegotiate almost always works perfectly in my experience. I've only had a single NIC had any problem with auto negotiate. It was where it auto negotiated to half duplex when full duplex operation was possible. This was because the NIC was set to do this on purpose. (old ISA 3com NIC)
There are some things you can do to test as well as improve performance.
1) you can test with netperf, but it doesnt accurately reflect what you'll get out of SMB transfers. Directions should be either here or at SR, i've posted several times on netperf.
2) eliminate unneeded adapters and protocols. For internet/lan access and file sharing you should need TCP/IP, but do not need netBEUI or IPX/SPX. If they are installed remove them.
You will obviously need your NIC, but will not need dialup or VPN adapters. Remove them. You can also uninstall dialup networking from the windows setup tab of add/rem programs. This has noticable sped up win9x computers general performance in my experience.
3) Drivers are everything with NICs. Make sure you have up to date drivers.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
btw, 3MB/sec isnt all that bad. when transfering fragmented files( like things downloaded via edonkey or torrent) or am doing multiple I/O related tasks simultaneously I cant even max out a 100MBit connection using my WD 1200BB which is a 40GB platter 7200rpm drive.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I updated the drivers and removed the dial-up and dial-up VPN adaptors. I had already set the speed to 100Mbs/full duplex. No speed improvement using Windows file copying (still stuck at ~3 MB/sec) but I did get a slight speed improvement when transferring files using Total Copy (my transfer speed with a 45 MB file jumped from 4 MB/sec to 4.5 MB/sec). I'll have to try this with a faster computer on the other end, or perhaps just bring my mom's box into my bedroom and connect it with only a 3-foot cable to the router. If there's a noticeable speed difference then I have losses/interference in my cabling.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I bought my mom's machine upstairs and connected it to the router with just a 3 foot cable. No change in transfer speeds, which is at least a good sign that there's nothing worng with my cabling. So far it seems like this connection maxes out at ~4.5MB/sec. I suppose unless anybody has any other ideas I'll have to live with this, at least between these two machines. Later on I'll try file transfers to my brother's 475 MHz machine.
Probably the only thing I'll do regularly over the network involving transferring large amounts of data will be backing up over the network. However, I think the speed at which data can be compressed will be the limiting factor, especially on the 200 MHz machine, rather than the network transfer speed. In fact, even disk to disk backups seldom run faster than 5 MB/sec, even on my 1570 MHz machine.
Probably the only thing I'll do regularly over the network involving transferring large amounts of data will be backing up over the network. However, I think the speed at which data can be compressed will be the limiting factor, especially on the 200 MHz machine, rather than the network transfer speed. In fact, even disk to disk backups seldom run faster than 5 MB/sec, even on my 1570 MHz machine.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
Use the broadbandreports Tweak Test & Dr. TCP to tweak your TCP/IP settings. Yes, it's for broadband, but the same theories apply to desktop usage. Mainly, checking your xmit/rcv buffers and MTU. Also check their FAQs.
A few years back (and a few upgrades ago) when I first got DSL, using the tweaks upped my DSL throughput by about 20%.
A few years back (and a few upgrades ago) when I first got DSL, using the tweaks upped my DSL throughput by about 20%.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks again, Fushigi. In the rush to set up and test my LAN I had forgotten about tweaking my mom's PC for maximum download speed. I had done so for my PC soon after setting up everything. Anyway, tweaking a few settings increased the download speeds on my mom's PC from about 2100kbs to 2800 kbs, which is about where RoadRunner is capped. The tweaking didn't do as much for LAN file transfers. So far my best transfer speed is around 5 MB/sec, and transfers to my brother's faster machine were actually slower. However, I suspect the fact that he had AOL until recently to be the culprit. Perhaps once all AOL's buggy software is exorcized from his hard drive things will be better.....
BTW, I'm running the following settings on both PCs:
TCP rcv Window: 256960
Window Scaling: Yes
Time Stamping: No
Selective Acks: Yes
Path MTU Discovery: Yes
Black Hole Detection: No
Max. Duplicate Acks: 3
TTL: 64
MTU: 1500
BTW, I'm running the following settings on both PCs:
TCP rcv Window: 256960
Window Scaling: Yes
Time Stamping: No
Selective Acks: Yes
Path MTU Discovery: Yes
Black Hole Detection: No
Max. Duplicate Acks: 3
TTL: 64
MTU: 1500
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Best I'm able to do now from my machine is ~5.5MB/sec to a P200 machine and ~4.5 MB/sec from the same machine. I did get close to 7 MB/sec when transferring from my brother's machine.
Except for my brother's machine, all my machines use the same NIC which uses a Realtek 8139 chipset.
Except for my brother's machine, all my machines use the same NIC which uses a Realtek 8139 chipset.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
i've had good luck with that chipset. It's cheap and generic, but has the potential for 10MB/sec transfers.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Interestingly, Netperf tells me I'm only getting 32Mb/sec transfers either way but I transferred a few GB of data (mostly large files) yesterday to the slower machine and I averaged about 5 MB/sec. I'm guessing I could probably approach the 10MB/sec figure you mentioned between two faster machines.
From what I'm reading the earlier versions of the Realtek 8139 chipset had problems but those were supposedly corrected by about 2001. Given that I only paid $8.50 per card shipped I'm not too unhappy with the performance I've been getting. I've already eliminated cabling as the source of any problems. Both machines have a Promise Ultra100Tx2 controller and fairly new hard disks so drive transfer speed isn't a bottleneck either. I noticed my USB controller and the NIC are sharing the same IRQ on my faster machine. Might that be affecting LAN speed? I already moved the NIC to another slot because the first slot it was in caused it to share IRQs with my graphics card. I don't know how much this affected LAN speeds but when I played MS Train Simulator my frame rates were reduced by a factor of three. After I moved the card they returned to normal.
From what I'm reading the earlier versions of the Realtek 8139 chipset had problems but those were supposedly corrected by about 2001. Given that I only paid $8.50 per card shipped I'm not too unhappy with the performance I've been getting. I've already eliminated cabling as the source of any problems. Both machines have a Promise Ultra100Tx2 controller and fairly new hard disks so drive transfer speed isn't a bottleneck either. I noticed my USB controller and the NIC are sharing the same IRQ on my faster machine. Might that be affecting LAN speed? I already moved the NIC to another slot because the first slot it was in caused it to share IRQs with my graphics card. I don't know how much this affected LAN speeds but when I played MS Train Simulator my frame rates were reduced by a factor of three. After I moved the card they returned to normal.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
it really depends on the chipset. On a modern computer it shouldn't have made any difference, probably just something about the cards that didnt play nice together.
Since you're probably not using USB and LAN at the same time I wouldn't expect sharing an IRQ to make a difference.
Since you're probably not using USB and LAN at the same time I wouldn't expect sharing an IRQ to make a difference.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Some further tests today with my 1.56 GHz machine and a PII-450 give me transfer rates of ~7 MB/sec in either direction. Using netperf gives me 93.27 Mb/sec (PII sending) in one direction and 94.50 Mb/sec (PII as host) in the other, both using Realtek 8139 NICs. At least I know these particualr NICs can come close to their theoretical maximum. I'm guessing the difference between what I observe in Netperf versus what I get in the real world is overhead plus processing power needed to run the transfer protocols as well as the NICs. Assuming overhead is ~10% I should be able to get transfers of 10 to 10.5 MB/sec between two very fast machines. The PII is probably the main bottleneck in this setup. As an aside, enabling DMA on the PII speeded up transfers from 2 to 7 MB/sec due to the decreased processor overhead. More RAM in the PII would likely help as well (I had to borrow 64MB from my brother's machine).
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
I thought I'd drag this thread back to ask what people recommend for a router these days. There's so many to choose from. I have joined the heady ranks of those in the cult of RoadRunner. I have a Dell wireless router thingie but it seems to have died, the Dell control panel tool doesn't recognise it anymore. Might have been the time I was trying to get it to work with a dial up connection shared via ICS, may have commited electronic suicide. Wireless or wired is fine. I have .11b and .11a for my lappie, so .11a may be useful? Prob cut down the selection and jack up the price in that case.
TIA, Pradeep
And I must say, HDTV really does look very good indeed. A tremendous difference from DVD rez. Bring on HD-DVD!
TIA, Pradeep
And I must say, HDTV really does look very good indeed. A tremendous difference from DVD rez. Bring on HD-DVD!
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
To the top!
JTR, I understand that you guys in NYC are now experiencing the delights of 5 mbit/sec dl speeds via RoadRunner? Have you noticed any difference? Has the upload cap been increased? Can't wait till January, when the rest of the country gets the faster speeds.
JTR, I understand that you guys in NYC are now experiencing the delights of 5 mbit/sec dl speeds via RoadRunner? Have you noticed any difference? Has the upload cap been increased? Can't wait till January, when the rest of the country gets the faster speeds.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
When I read your post I was ready to say I hadn't noticed any difference but then I decided to try one of the download speed tests to see if the service really was upgraded. I did and I got the same 2814 kbs which I've gotten since I hooked up with RoadRunner. Apparently the speed increase probably hasn't reached the outer booughs yet. Remember that in much of the country, NYC is synonomous with Manhattan. So long as Manhattan has the higher speeds, Time Warner will say they upgraded NYC.
I'll guess I'll have to wait until January if need be, although I'll be testing my speed every day from this point onwards.
Oh, and upload speeds are still the same also at 384 kbs. I really hope that gets upgraded. I'll keep you posted on this.
I'll guess I'll have to wait until January if need be, although I'll be testing my speed every day from this point onwards.
Oh, and upload speeds are still the same also at 384 kbs. I really hope that gets upgraded. I'll keep you posted on this.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
Apparently some guys at dslreports have had luck by powering off their cable modem for a minute, then turning back on. May be worth a try.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Thanks, Pradeep. That did the trick-4725 mbs down! :thumbright: Still 384 kbs up but I guess you can't have everything. We'll see if everything feels faster.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
wow, I had not heard of this... but I was told that the premium service will be going to 8Mbit/sec instead of the current 6MB/sec.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
blakerwry said:
Yes RR "Business" class to 8, and non premium to 5.
blakerwry
Storage? I am Storage!
They offer Regular, Premium, and business class. To my knowledge the Premium came out about a year ago.
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Slightly OT, getting 8Mb/s adsl here for about 59€, and 16Mb/s and 24Mb/s adsl is already being sold here. Haven't heard any comments yet, as no one I know has anything over 8Mb/s.
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
blakerwry said:
It seems "Premium" has a 512Kb upload limit. Given the cost of around $70 per month, it hardly seems a worthwhile upgrade from standard RR. Maybe if they increase the upload to 756Kb.
What are your upload speeds like JoJo? And any bandwidth caps?
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
Upload for me is 1Mb/s. I haven't check the higher speeds yet, but if I remember correctly, they aren't much higher. Gotta google for the HW for 16/24Mb/s....
The JoJo
Wannabe Storage Freak
And as for caps, that's the max you'll get out of these lines. Strictly controlled, it seems.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
AFAIK, 8Mbs is the design limit of ADSL - it's not capping. You need ADSL2 to go beyond that and ADSL2+ to reach 25Mbps. I've been told that range at the higher speeds is very limited (just looked it up and the cable length tops out at 1500m!)
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I personally don't know what the bandwidth limit is for a cable ISP like RR but the modem they gave me is good up to 30 Mb/sec. I wonder when/if we'll ever see standard speeds that high?
About the only difference I'm noticing at this point going from 3 to 5 Mb/sec is that downloads are much faster. General surfing doesn't seem that much faster for I think two reasons. First, no matter how fast the pages are sent to my PC it takes a certain amount of time for them to render. Second and more importantly, quite a few sites (i.e. eBay) have enough traffic that there isn't that much difference going from 56Kb/s to 3Mb/s, let alone 5 Mb/s. Still, the speed increase should come in handy once I have enough time to play around with Linux distros. It should take under 20 minutes to download an .iso compared to a bit over 30 minutes before.
All that being said, past a point faster Internet is like faster CD burners. Outside of things like Linux distros the majority of downloads out there are usually 100 MB or less. 5 Mb/s saves me not much over two minutes on a 100 MB download, and mere seconds on most of the downloads I typically do. The 24Mb/s being talked about here would have even smaller increases in terms of minutes saved unless the downloads are really huge. A typical (for me) 20 MB download took me a minute before and 36 seconds now. At the 30 Mb/s limit of my cable modem it would take 6 seconds. Considering that I average well under 100 MB per day, we're talking about saving a few minutes daily at best. My conclusions-unless you're downloading gigabytes each and every day, or having a bunch of users sharing an Internet connection, upgrading to RR premium service is hardly worth it.
About the only difference I'm noticing at this point going from 3 to 5 Mb/sec is that downloads are much faster. General surfing doesn't seem that much faster for I think two reasons. First, no matter how fast the pages are sent to my PC it takes a certain amount of time for them to render. Second and more importantly, quite a few sites (i.e. eBay) have enough traffic that there isn't that much difference going from 56Kb/s to 3Mb/s, let alone 5 Mb/s. Still, the speed increase should come in handy once I have enough time to play around with Linux distros. It should take under 20 minutes to download an .iso compared to a bit over 30 minutes before.
All that being said, past a point faster Internet is like faster CD burners. Outside of things like Linux distros the majority of downloads out there are usually 100 MB or less. 5 Mb/s saves me not much over two minutes on a 100 MB download, and mere seconds on most of the downloads I typically do. The 24Mb/s being talked about here would have even smaller increases in terms of minutes saved unless the downloads are really huge. A typical (for me) 20 MB download took me a minute before and 36 seconds now. At the 30 Mb/s limit of my cable modem it would take 6 seconds. Considering that I average well under 100 MB per day, we're talking about saving a few minutes daily at best. My conclusions-unless you're downloading gigabytes each and every day, or having a bunch of users sharing an Internet connection, upgrading to RR premium service is hardly worth it.