Slow gigabit performance...help please

[Asmodeus097]

I have an odd problem which hopefully some one can provide some answers for. I just recently went gigabit and was stupid and didn't thoroughly research hardware like I usually do and now that I am not seeing the gigabit performance jump I was expecting all the talk of jumbo frames and all the different MTU sizes is driving me nuts trying to figure out what is right for my setup.

First off I have a file server computer running XP Professional that is pretty fast and a gaming desktop which also runs XP Professional. The heart of the problem is this, when I drop a file onto the mapped drive of my file server I get 8% network utilization in task manager sending files. However when I drag a file FROM my file server I get around 18% network utilization. While this is considerably faster I was expecting much more. At one time I was able to get in the upper 20s but no more. Is it too ambitious to expect upper 30s or lower 40s? Also unexplicably the "system" process in task manager eats up 100% cpu usage for the duration of the file transfers. The file transfer speed does not change whether its on the SATA drive or PATA drive also. Below is a description of my hardware setup. I hope one of you has a suggestion because i'm pretty stumped.

===File Server Computer===
Asus A7N8x Deluxe
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton core (overclocked to 2800+ 2.09 Ghz) w/512kb l2 cache
1.5 Gigs of PC-3200 DDR400
Netgear GA311 32bit PCI NIC
60GB Maxtor ATA133 (system drive)
200GB WD ATA100
320GB WD SATA150
---GA311 advanced settings---
Jumbo frames - ENABLE
Link speed/duplex mode -1000Mbps/Full Duplex
Offload Checksum - Tx/Rx Checksum
Offload TCP_Large Send - ENABLE

There is no setting for MTU in advanced settings for the GA311 but I did use DrTCP from dsl reports to have windows set the MTU to 9000 with a TCP Receive window of 256960 on both computers


===Gaming Computer===
Asus SK8V
AMD Opteron 144 w/hypertransport overclocked to 212mhz @1.9 ghz
1 gig Corsair PC-3200
Integrated 3com Gigabit LOM 3C940 (drivers come from the 3C2000 family)
(2) 36 gig WD Raptor drives in RAID0 (system drive)

----3C940 Advanced Settings---
Flow Control - Asymmetrical and Symmetrical
Hardware Checksumming - On (zero and 1 are options but i'm not sure what those mean)
Link speed - 1 (not sure what that means)
Maximum frame size - 1514 (I have tried increasing this to 9000 and 7500. At 9,000 web pages don't load for me and my network connection to my file server stalls and times out. At 7500 I can browse the web but my network connection to the file server still does the same behavior.)
Media Type - 1000Mb, Full Duplex
Number of Receive buffers - 50
Number of Transmit Buffers - 50

There are a few other settings that seemed unimportant that I didn't list so feel free to ask if I missed a setting

===Switch==
D-Link DGS-1005D Gigabit switch
Both computers are connected to the switch with CAT6 cable

 

[Cooky]

Check your cables - idealy they should be cat6, but sometimes cat 5/e will do.

 

[Asmodeus097]

Originally posted by: Asmodeus097
Both computers are connected to the switch with CAT6 cable

 

[sonoma1993]

im not sure but the pci bus on your asus a7n8x deluxe may not have enough pci bandwidth for the 1gigabit ethernet card for that speed.

 

[Asmodeus097]

What about the PCI NIC? I have seen a more expensive 3Com PCI NIC that touted a "128K Deep packet buffering" which would mean 128k of onboard memory...it sounds like to me this Netgear thing in here is a piece of junk. Its supposed to "offload" the packet management away from the CPU but I still get 100% cpu anyways. Maybe a new and better NIC is what I need?

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Asmodeus097
What about the PCI NIC? I have seen a more expensive 3Com PCI NIC that touted a "128K Deep packet buffering" which would mean 128k of onboard memory...it sounds like to me this Netgear thing in here is a piece of junk. Its supposed to "offload" the packet management away from the CPU but I still get 100% cpu anyways. Maybe a new and better NIC is what I need?

It sounds like a driver issue if you are getting 100% CPU Utilization.

Are your HDD"s in PIO mode by chance?

 

[Asmodeus097]

My system drive is in Ultra DMA 6 Ultra 133 and my 200 gig PATA is in Ultra DMA5 - Ultra 100....what is PIO mode? My 320 Gig drive is a SATA drive which is apparently also in Ultra DMA mode 5 according to the driver screen. Also my gaming computer CPU usage goes to 30-45% CPU usage which varies while in file transfer which is fine...but it just shows that the same amount of data being transferred is not killing my CPU on my gaming computer. Also if its a driver issue I don't know where to get alternate drivers. There is only one driver version as far as I know and they came with the card from Netgear.

 

[jamesbond007]

What happens when you take the switch out and connect the PCs together with a CAT6 rollover cable?

 

[Asmodeus097]

I don't know, I don't have a crossover cable.

 

[TXJustin]

Originally posted by: Asmodeus097
My system drive is in Ultra DMA 6 Ultra 133 and my 200 gig PATA is in Ultra DMA5 - Ultra 100....what is PIO mode? My 320 Gig drive is a SATA drive which is apparently also in Ultra DMA mode 5 according to the driver screen. Also my gaming computer CPU usage goes to 30-45% CPU usage which varies while in file transfer which is fine...but it just shows that the same amount of data being transferred is not killing my CPU on my gaming computer. Also if its a driver issue I don't know where to get alternate drivers. There is only one driver version as far as I know and they came with the card from Netgear.

XP, right? Right click on My Computer, and go to Properties.
Hardware Tab > Device Manager
Expand IDE controllers, and check the properties of the IDE channels under the advanced tab. You want it set to "DMA if available" and check your current transfer mode.

The high CPU usage would indcate to me that you are in PIO mode, as MCrusty suggested.

 

[Asmodeus097]

I checked that after MCrusty asked that and the transfer modes are as follows

60Gig Maxtor System Drive - "Ultra DMA 6 - Ultra133"
200Gig WD Storage Drive - "Ultra DMA 5 - Ultra100"
320Gig WD Storage SATA - Driver info says DMA 5

PIO mode is an option on the list but it is not selected. I have a screenshot if you need to see it.

 

[nweaver]

this sounds like a driver issue (100 percent usage) or a link speed negotiation issue. Try playing with your auto/full settings on both the switch and on the computer to see if that fixes anything.

 

[Asmodeus097]

I have set it to dedicated 1000mbps full duplex on both adapters...one interesting thing I just found...everything I have posted till now for my gaming computer has been on 32 bit windows. I just booted into 64bit windows and my receive speed topped out at 30% this time instead of 18% in 32 bit windows....but my copy speed TO the file server still remains at 8%. Interesting hmm?

 

[nweaver]

change speed and duplex to auto and try again

 

[spidey07]

try a different cable back to back on the machines (get it as simple as possible).

The cards should auto cross over.

 

[Asmodeus097]

Just for anyone else experiencing this problem, I went out and bought a Linksys EG1032 and it solved all my problems! The problem was that hunk of junk Netgear! Just by replacing the card my copy TO the file server jumped from 8% to 28% with both on Windows XP Pro. In addition to that I reformatted and took the file server to 2003 Server and my copy to speed jumped even more to 42% network utilization!

In Sumary,

Netgear swapped out for Linksys Rendered a 20% improvement in speed

XP Professional swapped out for 2003 server w/Linksys 32Bit PCI Card rendered a total of 34% improvement!

 

[spidey07]

I'm still thinking it is a configuration issue.

 

[Asmodeus097]

Configuration issue? Are you saying that 42% network utilization is still too low? Or are you saying you think the problem WAS a configuration issue and everything is fine now.

 

[nweaver]

I think he is saying it WAS a configuration issue.

 

[mp3turbo]

heya guys, you have to understand that this was NOT JUST configuration issue. Surely, swapping Netgear network card for something better did help, but... read that asmodeus097 reformatted drive and installed win2003server - what means two things:

a) very effective DEFRAGMENTATION of file system - data are not scattered all over the place
b) OS which is more TARGETED at providing NETWORK performance and services than previously used XP (=workstation system).

100% cpu utilization was definitely cured with less generated interrupts and more effective use of busmastering mode on PCI bus (which card design and/or driver can be responsible of), but definitely having 40% utilization on 1000Mbps ethernet means that you are transferring 400Mbit/s = 50MBytes/s THRU network, what means that you HAVE TO HAVE THAT DATA SOMEWHERE FROM = they have to travel thru PCI bus (of course, because network card is connected there) and YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO _READ_ or _WRITE_ THAT MUCH DATA FROM HARDDRIVE, WHAT IS NOT EASY TASK !!!!

btw, PCI bus is capable of doing 133MB/s theoretically, around 115MB/s really (standard 32bit, 33MHz) or twice as much with new chipsets (64bit, 33MHz) or four times as much (64bits, 66MHz) so PCI bus was NEVER limitation factor in asmodeous troubles so far.

dealing with network cards, I can recommend Intels. They do every possible thing to offload main processor what counts instead of buying new noname card for $10 at shop I highly prefer buying Intel Gigabit on ebay.

You can test RAW throughput capabilities of your setup using some program, which is going to generate network traffic only, transfer it thru network and receive + report on the other end (=second computer). Sadly, I can't recommend you one right now, but NO current harddrive is able to sustain gigabit transfers - network is MUCH faster than storage system these days. Most drives tops at around 50MB/s (some are bit faster), but you will see this speed only at the beginning of drive (when the drive is 30% full, it starts to plummet) when the filesystem is not fragmented (check this with windows built-in fragmentation tool, any head-movement will effectively stop drive from transferring data). Gigabit network card is capable of pushing 128MB/s (1000/8 = 128, really around 110MB because of limitation of 32bit/33Mhz PCI bus).

Having said this, we have another conclusion : NEVER test achievable throughput with transfers like copying large file (movie, DVD etc) from one computers' harddisk to another one because you have TWO factors you can't weight and influence - speed and defragmentation of those two harddrives.

Thanks for reading, hope it gave you some new things.

best regards, mp3turbo.

 

[nweaver]

I'm still going to say it was more of a cheap hardware incompatibility with speed/duplex/mtu. I have 2 XP boxes routed through a gig linux server and they push and pull extreamly fast, but I have made sure everything is happy 1000/full (had a netgear switch that wanted to bump down due to problems nogoiating). I can do FTP transfers at 200 Mb/s