Low ethernet speed on Gigabit-capable network cards

[Hashim]

I recently bought a Belkin 2m cat5e crossover cable to connect my desktop to my D530 laptop, in the hopes that it would be a faster way for me to directly transfer data between the two. The desktop's ethernet card is a Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller (model no. RTL8167), and the D530's is a Broadcom NetExtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller (model no. B57ND60X). Both seem to be gigabit-capable cards, yet I'm not able to get gigabit speeds from them; when looking at the connection, it shows 100Mbit/s, and the fastest speed that each of them can be set to in Device Manager -> Advanced -> Speed & Duplex is 100Mbit Full Duplex. Even worse, I'm not even getting those speeds when I transfer data - I'm getting a measly 1MB/s, so about 8Mbit/s, and even that is constantly dropping.

So far, I've tried updating uninstalling and then updating both drivers automatically via the Device Manager.

I then manually installed drivers, the Desktop's from here: Realtek RTL81XX PCI-E Network Connection Driver Driver Details | Dell UK, and the laptop's using DriverMax because I couldn't find a driver for it.

Still no luck, and I'm now at a loss for what to try. When I bought the crossover, I really didn't think it'd take this much to get it up and running, I suppose I was under the naive impression it'd be pretty much plug-and-play.

 

[AddRAM]

How much data do you have to transfer ?

Wouldn`t a flash drive work for you ?

 

[Hashim]

How much data do you have to transfer ?

Wouldn`t a flash drive work for you ?

No, it's a fair bit of movies that I'm wanting to transfer from the laptop to the desktop, more than any USB drive I've got access to. I also want it to be fast, and seeing as both machines have only USB 2 ports, I decided to opt for ethernet - when I read up online on sites like Lifehacker touting its use for quick transfers, it seemed as direct a method as you could get without opening up the computer or fiddling about with copying to and from pen drive; just stick in a cable and copy once. As a computer geek that grew up with wireless connections and whose knowledge of wired networking - networking as a whole, really - is lacking, I'm also appreciating the experience so far - so long as I can get it working eventually, haha.

 

[Tranquil Hegemo]

In your OP you state that you are getting circa 1MB/s and that it is constantly dropping - I assume that you are referring to dropped packets here?

Sounds like you have the latest drivers installed but have you tried those from the manufacturer as opposed to those that Windows Update decided was best? Worth a try if you haven't.

How are the speed duplex options set up on both NIC's? If they are set to auto\auto try setting both ends the same - i.e. 100 full and see if that improves matters.

 

[Hashim]

In your OP you state that you are getting circa 1MB/s and that it is constantly dropping - I assume that you are referring to dropped packets here?

Sounds like you have the latest drivers installed but have you tried those from the manufacturer as opposed to those that Windows Update decided was best? Worth a try if you haven't.

How are the speed duplex options set up on both NIC's? If they are set to auto\auto try setting both ends the same - i.e. 100 full and see if that improves matters.

Sorry, I should have mentioned. When I said dropping I meant the actual speed was dropping - it started at 1MB/s and kept on dropping by a few hundred KB each second. However, since first posting the thread, I managed to resolve that problem by setting the Speed on both network cards to the max setting available in the Device Manager - 100 Mbit/s Full Duplex, and then restarted both machines. I'm now able to get a pretty constant average of 100 MBit/s.

However, my primary problem - that I don't see any option at all for 1000 Mbit/s in the Speed field in Device Manager, despite the fact both network cards are supposedly Gigabit-capable - still persists. Do you have any idea why it's not even showing up?

 

[samuria]

Full duplex means both station can send at the same time which you dont wont if your sending only from 1 pc to the other. Second if you have anti virus on both pcs it may be scanned sending and writing on the other pc which can slow it a lot disable it while coping. The fastest way to copy is to use the built in robocopy which you can get a gui for now this is the fastest way to copy and it was built for servers http://download.microsoft.com/downl...8546-25c359cc0842/UtilitySpotlight2006_11.exe

 

[Tranquil Hegemo]

No worries about that - it wasn't clear so just seeking clarification on that. Suspected that it was a conflict with the speed\duplex settings on the NIC's - one set at half duplex and the other at full?

With regard to getting both running at gigabit speeds - as suggested earlier I would see if there are specific NIC drivers from the manufacturer(s) of both motherboards instead of those Windows Update has opted for.