I doubt the 100% CPU problem would be caused by cheap hardware. You should look for new/better drivers for Windows. the cheapest-crappiest NICs I have seen still perform OK in Linux, here is a knoppix live-cd with iperf: http://s-t-d.org/download.html I notice on average Windows will use 5-20% more CPU for network I/O operations so that could compound a dodgy driver scenario.
Linux would be a good idea, Ive got a Knoppix live DVD at home so I'll give that a go, hoefully determine if the problem is due to windows drivers or the NIC etc
I'm having problems as well. I'm only getting ~6MB/s throughput on actual file transfers (i.e., copy & paste from a mapped network drive), although iperf records speeds around 75MB/s (even DURING the transfers in question). 20GB files take well over 40 minutes at 6MB/s. Any ideas what the problem could be? I'm thinking about installing FTP servers on the machines to see if that works better than this Windows networking crap.
Slow hard disks? Try running one of the many free benchmark utilities to see that's the problem. Also try updating your device drivers, check that you have DMA turned on in Windows and that there are no go-slow gremlins hiding in your computer. :)
albatross83: I'm having problems as well. I'm only getting ~6MB/s throughput on actual file transfers (i.e., copy & paste from a mapped network drive), although iperf records speeds around 75MB/s (even DURING the transfers in question). 20GB files take well over 40 minutes at 6MB/s. Any ideas what the problem could be? I'm thinking about installing FTP servers on the machines to see if that works better than this Windows networking crap.
Sorry to be skeptical of your understanding of networking since for all I know you could have every professional certification in the book, but I've seen far too many people on forums get confused about the difference between megabits and megabytes. Networks are generally measured in megabits, abbreviated Mb or Mb/s, while file transfers and downloads, etc. are generally measured in megabytes, abbreviated MB or MB/s. There are 8 bits in every byte, so:
1 gigabit per second (1000 Mb/s) = 125 MB/s
100 Mb/s = 12.5 MB/s
Are you using a gigabit network or standard 100 megabit network?
I have a suspicion that iperf is measuring your network at 75 Mb/s, which would be 9.4 MB/s (and this is your max speed, not involving harddrives).
Your real world figure of 6 MB/s, while dissapointing, isn't too far off what it should be if your using a standard 100 Mb/s network.
juha: Try running one of the many free benchmark utilities to see that's the problem. Also try updating your device drivers, check that you have DMA turned on in Windows and that there are no go-slow gremlins hiding in your computer. :)
The drives all benchmark over 40MB/s average in HDTach, and I even tried copying to two different target drives. Latest motherboard drivers are installed, DMA is on. I did disable NOD32 Antivirus and any/all apps running in the background which would access the hard drive (Bittorrent, BOINC Client, etc), and that added a marginal 1MB/s to the transfer rate.
freitasm: Also check in the Device Manager that each drive's got Cache enabled and Write Behind enabled.
Cache is enabled. Write behind appears to be a function of the cache, although the other (greyed out) options are set to "Performance."
mojo: I have a suspicion that iperf is measuring your network at 75 Mb/s, which would be 9.4 MB/s (and this is your max speed, not involving harddrives).
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 2.00 MByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[1772] local 192.168.1.101 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.102 port 49176
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[1772] 0.0- 1.0 sec 83.8 MBytes 703 Mbits/sec
[1772] 1.0- 2.0 sec 84.2 MBytes 706 Mbits/sec
[1772] 2.0- 3.0 sec 82.1 MBytes 689 Mbits/sec
[1772] 3.0- 4.0 sec 83.6 MBytes 701 Mbits/sec
On a side note, I discovered that pushing the file (browsing to \\target\c$\folder on the source computer to copy/paste) works about 4x faster than pulling the file from the target system. 24MB/s, while not spectacular, is probably ok. The target system is running Vista, so maybe there are some issues with that. Still bizarre though.
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