Microsoft Home Server Issues

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kman82

19 posts

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#67198 30-Aug-2010 10:54

Hey guys just wanted to start a discussion about my home network.

I have a 2wire 2701HGV-W running my ADSL2+ internet. First question for file transfer speed to be reasonable and streaming is there much of a difference between wired and wireless.

At the moment the Server is connected via a (Netgear WNR834B) thats been modded to act as a Wireless bridge 5 meters away from the 2wire router.

My transfer speeds are slow when im transferring files to and from server localy. Internet does not work and clogs up. Can the 2wire not handle all this?Do i need a more powerfull router? What kind of specs do i need for my home network to be able to handle clean file transfers and my internet at the same time.

Another question im having problems with getting the remote server to connect as well..it sais that i need to open ports which i have and to activate UPnP but the 2wire does not have.

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#374457 30-Aug-2010 11:34

kman82: Hey guys just wanted to start a discussion about my home network.

I have a 2wire 2701HGV-W running my ADSL2+ internet. First question for file transfer speed to be reasonable and streaming is there much of a difference between wired and wireless.

At the moment the Server is connected via a (Netgear WNR834B) thats been modded to act as a Wireless bridge 5 meters away from the 2wire router.

My transfer speeds are slow when im transferring files to and from server localy. Internet does not work and clogs up. Can the 2wire not handle all this?Do i need a more powerfull router? What kind of specs do i need for my home network to be able to handle clean file transfers and my internet at the same time.

Another question im having problems with getting the remote server to connect as well..it sais that i need to open ports which i have and to activate UPnP but the 2wire does not have.

So, just to confirm, you have your Windows Home Server connected via wirless to the router? And your getting slow speeds when streaming content from it?

If so then the wireless is your problem - i wouldn't recommend streaming much over wireless except music, anything even close to HD video can start to stutter. Wireless is a LOT slower than even 100Mb Ethernet, and is not dedicated bandwidth.

If the distince is only 5 meters can you not run a cable? Looking into your modem (the 2wire) it has 4 Ethernet ports, could you move the server and plug it into the 2wire?

Also how do your clients access the server, is it all wireless?

Plus the 2wire is only 54Mbps for the wireless, not that fast and probably < 15Mbps real world speed, which is pretty slow.

richms

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#374630 31-Aug-2010 02:27

and if you are streaming to another wireless device, then you can make it about 1/3 to 1/4 of the wireless to wired speeds, which will not even be enough for a SD TV rip at times.

Richard rich.ms

kman82

19 posts

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#374661 31-Aug-2010 08:05

Ok great am going to try a wired solution tonight will let you know how it goes I didn't think that wireless would be THAT bad considering my wireless download speeds sometimes hit 1.2mbits.
Should I have a high speed Ethernet port on my home server? Or do the gigabit ports on the router do all the work?

timbosan

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#374691 31-Aug-2010 09:11

kman82: Ok great am going to try a wired solution tonight will let you know how it goes I didn't think that wireless would be THAT bad considering my wireless download speeds sometimes hit 1.2mbits.
Should I have a high speed Ethernet port on my home server? Or do the gigabit ports on the router do all the work?

Don't forget that 1.2Mbps is only 0.15MB/s, which is not a lot. Look at http://www.mediaroad.com/products/speedcheck/free_tools/unit_convert/proc.php to do the conversion.

The problem with wireless (vs. wired) is that it is shared bandwidth and very variable - distances, walls, other devices can cause slowdowns. A cable is a dedicated route (ignoring any discussions about internal router bandwidth) that pretty much guarantees a speed between two devices.

And if you have gigabit Ethernet ports on both the server and the router then that can only help (but it will help more if the clients also have gigabit Ethernet).

SepticSceptic

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#374731 31-Aug-2010 09:58

kman82: Ok great am going to try a wired solution tonight will let you know how it goes I didn't think that wireless would be THAT bad considering my wireless download speeds sometimes hit 1.2mbits.

Should I have a high speed Ethernet port on my home server? Or do the gigabit ports on the router do all the work?

At the minimum you should have a 100mbs NIC on the WHS, far better to have a gigabit NIC port, even as an addin card on your WHS. They are cheap enough these days, and together with a gigbit router, you should achieve in excess of 200mbs data transfer speed - all the spare bandwidth you need :-=)

And yes, most recommendations re WHS are NOT to use wireless to connect directly to it. Fixed wiring to your router, and from the router onwards to your ISP can be what you want, but for your internal network, go gigabit all the way.

Lipex666

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#374741 31-Aug-2010 10:30

As the prev post wireless is hopeless and gig nicks are cheap and so is gig routers and switches and everything up to my tv is Gigabit Ethernet.

Movies stream flawlessly and with backing up several pc's you need this extra bandwidth.

As a headless server you can hide almost anywhere.

"The only way to learn some- thing is to do it"

kman82

19 posts

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#375035 31-Aug-2010 18:13

ok so ive put together a wired solution and connection is now getting between 6MB/second-8MB/second compared to the 1MB/second. i still feel this is pretty slow considering im using a 300 buck router modem (billion7404vnpx) is there anything else i can do to boost this??

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richms

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#375041 31-Aug-2010 18:38

The 300 dollar router modem is not going to be any better between gigabit ports than a $80 gigabit switch.

If everything supports jumbo frames, turn it on and that will help a lot, but 7-800 megabit is all you will see best case on a single transfer IME, normally less than that.

If you have 2 or more streams going then it is quite easy to saturate a gigabit lan from a standard PC and harddrive.

Richard rich.ms

kman82

19 posts

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#375095 31-Aug-2010 21:29

does it have to be activated on the router or is it something that automatically picked up..my router is a BiPAC 7404VNPX

any other options i should check?

timbosan

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#375120 31-Aug-2010 22:14

kman82: ok so ive put together a wired solution and connection is now getting between 6MB/second-8MB/second compared to the 1MB/second. i still feel this is pretty slow considering im using a 300 buck router modem (billion7404vnpx) is there anything else i can do to boost this??

Are the speeds you are quoting what you get copying files from the server to a workstation over a wired LAN? Doesn't seem too bad, if you want faster you could always buy a better (read: more expensive) switch, a dedicated unit separate from your modem. They tend to have more internal bandwidth.

However saying that, what did you do to get the speed results? Copy files? Run a LAN test program? Are you sure everything is Gigabit Ethernet and not 100Mbps?

EDIT: oh, and don't forget the speed of the source and destination systems will have an impact, especially disk and processor speeds, but also low memory.

richms

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#375122 31-Aug-2010 22:27

kman82: does it have to be activated on the router or is it something that automatically picked up..my router is a BiPAC 7404VNPX

any other options i should check?

jumbo frames are a feature of the network card, eitehr turned on in the advanced part of the properties of it which you can get to thru device manager, or some bloated crapware that you have to download for the card like some intel ones have in the form of "pro set"

Your switch will tell you its maximum frame size, put that in the frame size of the network card and away you go.

Richard rich.ms

kman82

19 posts

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#375156 1-Sep-2010 08:13

timbosan:
kman82: ok so ive put together a wired solution and connection is now getting between 6MB/second-8MB/second compared to the 1MB/second. i still feel this is pretty slow considering im using a 300 buck router modem (billion7404vnpx) is there anything else i can do to boost this??

Are the speeds you are quoting what you get copying files from the server to a workstation over a wired LAN?? Doesn't seem too bad, if you want faster you could always buy a better (read: more expensive) switch, a dedicated unit separate from your modem.? They tend to have more internal bandwidth.

However saying that, what did you do to get the speed results? Copy files? Run a LAN test program?? Are you sure everything is Gigabit Ethernet and not 100Mbps?

EDIT: oh, and don't forget the speed of the source and destination systems will have an impact, especially disk and processor speeds, but also low memory.

Yes have now everything wired now the actual home server pc does not have an gigabit connection and is a Pentium 4 with 4 gram which is something I'm going to amend I now have jumbo frames enabled and will do some more tests tonight.

SepticSceptic

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#375181 1-Sep-2010 09:32

kman82:

Yes have now everything wired now the actual home server pc does not have an gigabit connection and is a Pentium 4 with 4 gram which is something I'm going to amend I now have jumbo frames enabled and will do some more tests tonight.

Pent 4 with a couple of gig RAM with a second gig NIC ( as per my setup) should be able to get a sustained 200mbs transfer rate. The bottleneck is the HDDs and PCI bus (more likely the PCI bus ).

Connect WHS to all PC's (and Xbox, media devices etc) via a gig switch, and only connect your router to this gig switch using 1 patch cord. No other wired devices should be connecting to your router, only to the gig switch. Unless the other devices are only 100bps devices. But nevertheless, it's good practice to use the gig switch as your central network point, NOT your router.

If you connect other wired devices to the router, you are effectively imposing a bottleneck on data transfer from WHS to the device if you go thru the router. Like jumping off a motorway on to a country road.

kman82

19 posts

Geek

#375218 1-Sep-2010 10:36

But I thought my router was a switch also seeing they are all gigabit ports. Mk ill have to purchase a switch then any in mind?

kman82

19 posts

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#375222 1-Sep-2010 10:41

Could the external hd via usb connection on the home server be a problem even shifting files locally on the home server pc can be laggy. I think I need to install usb 2.0 drivers

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