Tarvis123 Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Hey all, I have tried everything I can think of to fix this issue, but my speeds are still very bad when trying to transfer between two Windows 7 x64 computers (one desktop, one laptop) using windows explorer. My setup is that my main desktop computer acts as a storage share for my biggest files (videos, programs, games) and is connected to a unmanaged gigabit switch (this one) via cat 6 cable. There is also an Asus RT-56U gigabit wireless-n router connected to the same switch via cat 6 that I use for my laptop. Wireless transfer speeds over the 5ghz N band that I can achieve at most is around 2-3 megabytes/sec. The wireless connection is unsecured, and there are no other wireless connections nearby at all as I live in a rural area with my nearest neighbor about 2 miles away. If I connect my laptop directly to the switch via cat6 cable, I can only achieve 5-6 megabytes per second at best. I've made sure to update the firmware/drivers for all the networking devices (except the switch since it's unmanaged), I have disabled auto-tuning and remote differential compression on both machines, and was able to get it to the above speeds (before I was getting around 1 megabytes per second). My laptop is an Alienware m17x r3 with Atheros AR8151 PCI-E gigabit connection, and my desktop has a Marvell Yukon 88e8056 gigabit ethernet connection. I'm really stumped on where the bottleneck is, so any help is appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detection Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 QoS ? Do you have a firewall / av installed on the laptop that could be scanning while copying ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarvis123 Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 QoS is disabled, and when I tested it last night there was no other devices on the network. Laptop is using the default windows firewall, and microsoft security essentials. Desktop is using default windows firewall, and eset nod5 antivirus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detection Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Tried a different CAT cable ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted June 13, 2012 MVC Share Posted June 13, 2012 "If I connect my laptop directly to the switch via cat6 cable, I can only achieve 5-6 megabytes per second at best." I agree that is no where near what you should see with even the cheapest of gig equipment. Lets take the HDD out of the picture and lets see what you can do on the wire. Couple of tools you can use, iperf, netio. Also you run nastester so we can get some actual numbers to work with, or at min robocopy a file so we can see the numbers of the transfer vs your rough estimate of what I assume the copy dialog is telling you. Lets forget wireless for now and work on what you can do via wire. So you can get iperf here http://sourceforge.n....0.zip/download You can use the java front end if you want, but the exe in also in there you can just run it directly. On your desktop run the server iperf -s -w 256k on laptop run iperf -c ipaddressofdesktop -w 256k Then switch if you run and run server on your laptop and client on your desktop. example - server is VM win7 running on my esxi box on a HP n40L, client is my actual desktop. C:\Windows\system32>iperf -c 192.168.1.210 -w 256k ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 192.168.1.210, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 256 KByte ------------------------------------------------------------ [156] local 192.168.1.100 port 54524 connected with 192.168.1.210 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [156] 0.0-10.0 sec 985 MBytes 826 Mbits/sec C:\Windows\system32> Or you can grab netio here http://www.ars.de/ar....nsf/docs/netio example to same VM win7 box C:\Windows\system32>netio -t 192.168.1.210 NETIO - Network Throughput Benchmark, Version 1.31 (C) 1997-2010 Kai Uwe Rommel TCP connection established. Packet size 1k bytes: 83.23 MByte/s Tx, 66.20 MByte/s Rx. Packet size 2k bytes: 89.80 MByte/s Tx, 69.53 MByte/s Rx. Packet size 4k bytes: 90.91 MByte/s Tx, 76.02 MByte/s Rx. Packet size 8k bytes: 102.16 MByte/s Tx, 71.31 MByte/s Rx. Packet size 16k bytes: 104.49 MByte/s Tx, 71.58 MByte/s Rx. Packet size 32k bytes: 100.90 MByte/s Tx, 80.42 MByte/s Rx. Done. And you can get nastester here http://www.808.dk/?c...nas-performance example of test against my VM file server running storage essentials server (bigger brother of WHS) NAS performance tester 1.4 http://www.808.dk/?nastester Running warmup... Running a 400MB file write on drive Z: 5 times... Iteration 1: 96.66 MB/sec Iteration 2: 109.07 MB/sec Iteration 3: 69.91 MB/sec Iteration 4: 111.16 MB/sec Iteration 5: 105.84 MB/sec ------------------------------ Average (W): 98.53 MB/sec ------------------------------ Running a 400MB file read on drive Z: 5 times... Iteration 1: 88.49 MB/sec Iteration 2: 90.37 MB/sec Iteration 3: 78.84 MB/sec Iteration 4: 88.72 MB/sec Iteration 5: 90.16 MB/sec ------------------------------ Average (R): 87.32 MB/sec ------------------------------ And last example is a simple robocopy from that VM file server of mine of a large 1.4GB file ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Total Copied Skipped Mismatch FAILED Extras Dirs : 1 0 1 0 0 0 Files : 1 1 0 0 0 0 Bytes : 1.356 g 1.356 g 0 0 0 0 Times : 0:00:24 0:00:24 0:00:00 0:00:00 Speed : 59483357 Bytes/sec. Speed : 3403.665 MegaBytes/min. Ended : Wed Jun 13 08:07:03 2012 Once we have some actual numbers to work with, just testing the wirespeed to see what you could do in theory, iperf, netio vs what you actually do via HDD read and write we can look to see what might be wrong. Quick thing to check is that your interfaces are actually showing connected at gig? Because 5-6 is like a bad 10mbit connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarvis123 Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 Thanks budman, I will have to test and post the results these later this evening. I do know that the interfaces in the local area connection status window are showing 1.0 Gbps speeds like in your picture however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted June 13, 2012 MVC Share Posted June 13, 2012 quick thing you can check is just take a look at your stats, are you seeing a lot retransmits, other errors? from cmd prompt do a netstat -s, you might want to reboot your machines so this clears the stats, and then do a file copy and look to see if your getting lots of errors or retransmits. Another test you can do is take windows out of the picture to make sure nothing wrong with your hardware. Grab your fav liveCD and boot both of your machines with that and then do a iperf test.. If this shows normal gig speeds, then we know your hardware is fine and just something with drivers/software on your machine causing the problem. I would for TESTING uninstall that esat nod stuff.. You sure its just antivirus and not a suite also doing firewall? Easy enough to uninstall for testing, and then just reinstall after you are getting normal speeds and verify your still getting normal speeds. My box just has the built in firewall (which I have disabled on my local interface - I have no need to firewall between my local secure private lan that only has devices I control on it. Just no need!) But the firewall will block all traffic if for some reason I move my desktop or it comes up on a unknown wireless network, etc.) Service is still running is my point. And then just MSE as antivirus/malware/etc. And as you can see I am not having any speed issues ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mduren2445 Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 firewall in the router? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted June 13, 2012 MVC Share Posted June 13, 2012 "firewall in the router?" Why would lan traffic go through the firewall on the router? He has stated that he connected both devices to the same downstream switch. Since the switch is unmanaged it is very very unlikely that there are any sort of vlans setup, he has not mentioned multiple segments that his desktop and laptop would be on that would require routing through this router. The only way the firewall on the router would come into play is if he was moving traffic through it, ie to the internet ok. Across segments that that router routes, again ok. But traffic between 2 machines on the same lan connected to the same switch would not ever touch the routers interfaces at all. So no his routers firewall could have nothing to do with the issue. Lets wait until we have some actual numbers to work with before just randomly throwing out ideas.. Routers firewall, might as well say its his toaster causing the problem ;) As to more information we could use in determining the problem - have you played with the MTU of the interfaces, like jumbo frames or anything? Do you have any hooks into the network driver like virtual software bridging? These can sometimes take a hit on performance. But from your reported speeds that would be a Major Major hit.. Very interested in seeing the iperf or netio tests to see what wire speed he is seeing, if this is low. Then like to see the report of netstat -s after a reboot. And the properties page of the interface to make sure no hooks that could be causing problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mduren2445 Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 if the tests don't show anything then the switch is complaining (its an off brand switch) If you have access to another switch I would try another one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarvis123 Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 As to more information we could use in determining the problem - have you played with the MTU of the interfaces, like jumbo frames or anything? Do you have any hooks into the network driver like virtual software bridging? These can sometimes take a hit on performance. I tried setting jumbo frames to 4k and 9k on both laptop and desktop, and as far as I could tell my switch supported this. However it didn't make any difference in speed, maybe reduced it some but I won't say that with any certainty. As far as hooks, the desktop is free of anything like that. The laptop has hamachi, virtualbox, and cisco vpn connections, but hamachi and the vpn are generally disabled all the time as I don't use them very often. As BudMan said, the firewall in the router wouldn't come into play when I did the direct connect through the switch and there are no vlans or any special routing instructions set up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted June 13, 2012 MVC Share Posted June 13, 2012 So for grins make sure you unhook virtualbox/hamachi and cisco vpn hooks.. You should be able to see your hooks on the properties page.. See for example my virtualbox bridge hook. I would make sure nothing is hooked into the nic other than your tcip/ip and windows client and file and print sharing.. Uncheck everything else - you can always just check them back in one at a time once we are seeing normal gig speeds. The older virtualbox use to be a pretty big hit, but from my latest testing its not all that bad. And I am seeing over 800 with my iperf tests so more than enough for my needs. But before I do believe the hook use to cause my iperf tests to drop to under 600. At one point I even had a second nic being used to bridge my virtualbox into my network. I would make sure you set your mtu back to the default 1500. And look into the cisco vpn, I know it normally turns on a firewall by default and likes to change the mtu to 1300 I believe. Neither of which should account for such low speeds, but could cause a hit in the long run. Very interested in seeing the actual wire number tests and the netstat -s results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarvis123 Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 I just got home and decided to try something. When I transferred a single iso file that was around 4.5gb, I got the expected transfer speed of 90-100 megabytes/sec. As soon as I transfer a folder that is 4.3gb in size (but is spread out over 60,000 files), the speed drops tremendously to 7-8gb. So the speed is a little better after having removed all the hooks, but is this much of a speed decrease normal network behavior when transferring so many files? I wouldn't think it would be, but I may be wrong. I will run the above tests, although it may be moot after finding out the network is fine when dealing with a single large file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted June 13, 2012 MVC Share Posted June 13, 2012 "(but is spread out over 60,000 files)" 60K of them.. Yeah that is going to be more of a HDD issue accessing all the files than actual network speed issue. You could try moving them with a multi threaded robocopy. Or I would would prob zip them up into 1 large file, then move the file over the network. Then expand the zip on the other box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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