Speed problems when copying across network?

Hi folks,

I'm having some serious issues when copying files across my network. It's a gigabit network, both cards shown on the switch as green i.e. gigabit.

Both machines are Win 7 Pro 64-bit.

I've had a variety of problems with very slow copying. Currently copying 90GB stuff and it's going at 3.78MBps which is well short or even 100Mbps networking. I've tried it both ways, i.e. from A -> B from machine A and from machine B.

Sometimes it works fine one way and not the other.

Network card on one is an Intel Gigabit CT PCIe card, the other is a built in Atheros PCIe controller. Both with the latest drivers.

Any thoughts on how to speed this up? I was going to try jumbo packets but the cards both use different measurements for setting so I don't know how to match them.

Cheers :)
Paul.

I think I may have solved my own problem. I set the jumbo frames to 4K on each machine and now getting ~60MBps!

It'll depend on the network card but basically:

Control Panel -> Device Manager

Open your network cards properties, then it'll normally be under advanced as Jumbo Frames. The value should match on all your network cards. You'll notice differences on different cards, i.e. Intel has 4088, 9XXX bytes and the Atheros one lists 2K, 3K, 4K etc MTU.

Also only do this on a gigabit network and make sure your switch supports jumbo frames.

probedb said:

It'll depend on the network card but basically:

Control Panel -> Device Manager

Open your network cards properties, then it'll normally be under advanced as Jumbo Frames. The value should match on all your network cards. You'll notice differences on different cards, i.e. Intel has 4088, 9XXX bytes and the Atheros one lists 2K, 3K, 4K etc MTU.

Also only do this on a gigabit network and make sure your switch supports jumbo frames.

Thanks for sharing your solution. :)
I'm sure it's going to benefit a lot of users on this forum.

Regards

No problem :)

Ztruker, just had a quick search and Broadcom.com - Ethernet NIC FAQs says

How can I configure Jumbo MTU?

1. In Microsoft Windows, right-click the Network Adapter in Network Connections, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Configure button and then the General tab. Jumbo MTU is set at 1500 bytes by default. To increase the size of the received frames, increase the byte quantity in 500-byte increments up to 9000 bytes.

Netware: Jumbo Frame is configured by adding the "Jumbo=XXXX" parameter to the driver load command line in the AUTOEXEC.NCF file, where XXXX is a value between 1514 and 9000 bytes.
Linux: The MTU can be changed on the device in which support this feature using the following command: "ifconfig eth<X> mtu <Value>". <Value> can be between 1500 and 9000, <X> is the device ID.
NOTE: Please note that not all Broadcom networking devices support Jumbo-frame. Please consult the respective product documentation to confirm that your device supports this feature.

I think the note at the end is the important part as your card might not support them.

I force my Intel card to gigabit rather than auto-negotiation as sometimes something causes it to pick 100Mbps when it's perfectly happy with 1Gbps.

Ztruker said:

My Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller only has options for 10, 100 or Auto. No way to force it to 1Gps that I can find. Bummer.

That's a bit odd, does your card ever connect at 1Gbps? I.e. green light on a gigabit switch? If it's orange it's only 100Mbps.

Tell a lie, it hasn't solved my issues at all.

It appears Win 7 just can't cope with copying lots of files across a network. It just randomly freezes all the time.

Shite.