[GetSome681]

Running a 100mbit network w/ a regular 4 port linksys broadband router, and i transfer a lot of files from my pc to my mac and back and forth (my mac is basically my file server - 2 x wd120jb raid 0).

I was using a different siemens router previously, and now that I switched back to my linksys it seems like my throughput has gone down. I mostly transfer files from my pc to my mac through windows file sharing, and it seems that I never utilize more than 75% of the 100mbps network speed, whether through smb, ftp, http.... I swear I used to get more, but maybe I'm just dreaming.

Does anyone else get more than 75-80% (~10MBps) usage of a 100mbit network?

If it's the case that you can never fully achieve 100% utilization, i might just go gig-e. Been looking at this for a while, and seems quite cheap, and a simple solution to my problem..

http://www.linksys.com/products/prod...4&prid=188

[Powaqqatsi]

AFAIK it's quite normal that you never really get the full 100 Mbps.

[superlarry]

Originally posted by Powaqqatsi:
AFAIK it's quite normal that you never really get the full 100 Mbps.

this is true - computers aren't fast enough to utilize this speed yet - the hard drives are usually the limiting factor. that 10 MB/sec is very impressive - probably thanks to your raid setup.
remember that it depends on computers on both ends - the client won't download from the server faster than it can store the information.

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by superlarry:
this is true - computers aren't fast enough to utilize this speed yet - the hard drives are usually the limiting factor. that 10 MB/sec is very impressive - probably thanks to your raid setup.
remember that it depends on computers on both ends - the client won't download from the server faster than it can store the information.

yeah, i have a raid setup w/ my pc as well, and I know for sure that both setups can read/write faster than 10 MB/s

i might just get that gigabit linksys router for the heck of it anyways as yet another cool computer related toy that i spend all my $ on

[kampl]

What are your interface duplex settings on the switch and workstations/servers? Theoretical 100baseTX full duplex operation is 200Mbps is it not? Not that you would ever see those speeds, but if your interfaces are not in full duplex mode now I would recommend making them so.

[exa]

Originally posted by superlarry:
this is true - computers aren't fast enough to utilize this speed yet - the hard drives are usually the limiting factor. that 10 MB/sec is very impressive - probably thanks to your raid setup.
remember that it depends on computers on both ends - the client won't download from the server faster than it can store the information.

Erm, single unraided hard disks can sustain 40MB/s, and on his raid closer to 80MB/s, so 1000BaseT would be the goal.

Not sure where your bottleneck is though. Perhaps the linksys is not switching correctly or some collisions are occuring or something... and if you go 1000BaseT you will need a router or a switch that can do that or some other setup from what you have.

I hate the linksys router though.

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by exa:
Erm, single unraided hard disks can sustain 40MB/s, and on his raid closer to 80MB/s, so 1000BaseT would be the goal.

Not sure where your bottleneck is though. Perhaps the linksys is not switching correctly or some collisions are occuring or something... and if you go 1000BaseT you will need a router or a switch that can do that or some other setup from what you have.

I hate the linksys router though.

Not sure about the previous poster in terms of the full or half duplex...not quite sure how to check that.

Also, yeah I'm not sure what could be wrong. Right now I actually have the PC and the mac connected via a cat5 crossover cable, and I really only get around 50-60 Mbps. I swear I should be getting more, and it's getting quite annoying, esp when I transfer close to 20 GB between the two each day, and I hate having to wait around.

EDIT: Also, I notice that when accessing the mac via the windows file sharing (as in just transferring files), the cpu on the PMac (400 MHz 7400) shoots up quite close to 100, i'd say prob around 85-90, with some peaks @ 100. Could it be a result of the cpu? that it's having to do both the windows file sharing stuff as well as the parity calculations for the raid? - moreso the wfs b/c i doubt the raid could slow it down that much (in terms of those calculations). just a thought...hope i don't have to replace my mac file server w/ a winbox since i'm poor and that's the only solution i could afford.

[exa]

Then perhaps one of the NICs is set on Half duplex (where only 1 pair instead of 2 (and there are 4 pairs!) of wires are used in the cable). I think 100BaseT is full duplex with 100MBps throughput, so check if one is not set on full duplex (probably not the mac). Not sure how to do that though.

edit: I think I'm wrong on that, 200Mbps may be the max (and I forget how the pairing of cables work). Maybe one of your NICs is slowing something down? Can you try another?

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by exa:
Then perhaps one of the NICs is set on Half duplex (where only 1 pair instead of 2 (and there are 4 pairs!) of wires are used in the cable). I think 100BaseT is full duplex with 100MBps throughput, so check if one is not set on full duplex (probably not the mac). Not sure how to do that though.

well the pc seems to be saying it has a 100Mbps connex so I'm not sure if that's the problem.

also I added some to my previous post as to a thought...who knows if it's right...prob just nonsense

[exa]

Hm the CPU being at 100% could sure be it, can you try a different protocol like ftp just to test speeds?

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by exa:
Hm the CPU being at 100% could sure be it, can you try a different protocol like ftp just to test speeds?

yeah w/ ftp i tend to get mroe like 80 Mbps as I stated in the first post maybe I don't remember.

[kampl]

I tend to seee Macs negotiating at 100 half in auto-neg situations. You can check the duplex by running ifconfig en0 (the builtin ethernet interface) which will show your speed and duplex. You can hard set it with Cocktail as I don't remember off hand how to hard set it from a terminal on OS X.

As for duplex and throughput, 200Mb is theorectical and talks about the cumulative throughput regarding the receive pairs and the send pairs in a full duplex switched environment so that you would see near 100Mbps speeds. In a full duplex switched environment you would see a higher overall throughput in that some of the overhead of CSMA/CD is no longer needed because your are basically talking about a direct endstation to endstation connection over separate send and receive pairs in a standard Category 5 cable. Or did I screw up somewhere?.............

Also, in my experience, SMB transfers are considerably slower than say an FTP transfer.

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by kampl:
I tend to seee Macs negotiating at 100 half in auto-neg situations. You can check the duplex by running ifconfig en0 (the builtin ethernet interface) which will show your speed and duplex. You can hard set it with Cocktail as I don't remember off hand how to hard set it from a terminal on OS X.

As for duplex and throughput, 200Mb is theorectical and talks about the cumulative throughput regarding the receive pairs and the send pairs in a full duplex switched environment so that you would see near 100Mbps speeds. In a full duplex switched environment you would see a higher overall throughput in that some of the overhead of CSMA/CD is no longer needed because your are basically talking about a direct endstation to endstation connection over separate send and receive pairs in a standard Category 5 cable. Or did I screw up somewhere?.............

Also, in my experience, SMB transfers are considerably slower than say an FTP transfer.

thx for the info...running that command it appears to be running in full-duplex mode, so maybe it's just the cpu combined w/ the slowdown w/ smb. anyone w/ a g4 400 get more than 50-60 Mbps thru smb? what about newer macs...are you guys closer to 100 or what?

[kampl]

Can't comment too much about 100full connections in a production environ as that I'm capped at 10half by another department for capacity reasons, but on switches I do control in the same environment I hit 80-90 using FTP and TFTP transfers with an 800MHz Powerbook. Probably not too useful information to you, sorry. If you've reached the capacity of the network and need more, which it's starting to sound like you may need GigE like you say. How time sensitive are these transfers anyway?

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by kampl:
Can't comment too much about 100full connections in a production environ as that I'm capped at 10half by another department for capacity reasons, but on switches I do control in the same environment I hit 80-90 using FTP and TFTP transfers with an 800MHz Powerbook. Probably not too useful information to you, sorry. If you've reached the capacity of the network and need more, which it's starting to sound like you may need GigE like you say. How time sensitive are these transfers anyway?

no, that's still useful.

also, thanks to everyone for helping out and giving all the advice and information they can..i appreciate it.

i think i might give GigE a try, but after inspecting it a little more, that router I was looking at only has 1 1000 port, and the rest are 100, so it's basically designed to have 1-8 computers ALL streaming data from the main server on the GigE line...so not what I need.

of course as we all know real GigE router are expensive so I can't go that route. what i'm thinking of however is that my pc has GigE, so I might just purchase a GigE pci card for my mac, along with a cat6 crossover. Does anyone know if the regular GigE pci card from like linksys and d-link will work in os x? tried doing a little searching and couldn't really find a SOLID answer. Ones advertised for macs are like $100 more so it's be nice to get one for like $50-60.

Thanks again!

[ghporter]

Originally posted by GetSome681:
of course as we all know real GigE router are expensive so I can't go that route. .... Ones advertised for macs are like $100 more so it's be nice to get one for like $50-60.

The "real" gigabit routers are commercial equipment, and of course they'll be expensive-many of them come from Cisco, which likes to remind us that they're the industry leader by charging large sums while providing very good equipment that's very complicated to configure. I guess they charge for the complication, too.

Anyway, note that 100BaseT ethernet has a significant overhead in addressing, acknowledgement, error handling, and so on. Unfortunately, there's very little in the way of available software that measures raw data throughput, let alone usable data throughput, so it's hard to get a handle on how much you're getting through your connection.

Linksys equipment isn't noted for being slower than competing equipment. Just about all SOHO routers use equivalent chipsets, so you should see about the same throughput for all of them, as long as they're configured similarly. My BEFSR41 works quite well, and I don't have any noticable slowdowns or what have you. I also have a US Robotics router and a Siemens router, and all of them pass data at about the same rate.

Your symptoms sure point to a NIC configuration mismatch, and as kampl notes, Macs tend to autonegotiate to half-duplex, reinforcing that notion. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact sequence for manually setting the NIC on a Mac (I'm at work, and don't have a Mac handy to refresh my memory).