Small Home Network's Speed?

[JackMDS]

Forget for the moment ?Big? LAN with professional Hardware.

Assuming that you have few computers attached to a simple switch or the switch of Cable/DSL Router.

What is the speed of transferring files that you actually get?

Please post your OS, and what is used for the transfer.

Example:
WinXP Pro to WinXP Pro. using Windows Explorer I get a transfer of 40Mb/sec. (5MB/sec.)

(Remember b=bit, B=Byte, 1Byte=8bits).

P.S. Once I have enough data I will post it organized.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I have a cheap dlink 100MBit switch and cheap generic 100mbit cards in all my pcs (though my server does have integrated gigabit)

when copying from my windows PC to linux server via FTP ... I average about 7000KB/S
when copying from my linux server to windows PC via FTP ... I average about 9000KB/S


When copying from my windows PC to my linux server, and copying from my linux server to my windows PC consecutivly, I average a Combined total of about 9000KB/Sec ...

When copying from my server to my windoze box via http (apache) I got about 8500KB/Sec

In all cases, my windows CPU utilization goes up to 100%. Its probably because i have a crappy $5 NIC in this box.

 

[saimike]

BurnItDwn, u're lucky ... i have a laptop and desktop (both win2k and 10/100), and only get 680kbps when i get a file from laptop to desktop (desktop has ws_ftp and laptop has warftpd). thats like 1/10 of ur speed!

this is with a bunch of avi's that r >100MB each.

i still havent figured out why we're only getting a tiny fraction of the theoretical 100Mbps the router/nic is rated for ... if anyone knows that, i'd appreciate a holler ...

 

[cleverhandle]

Transferring from OpenBSD server via OpenBSD router to Linux over NFS, I get a little over 10 MB/sec. NIC's are a variety of inexpensive models (FA311's, 905's, and similar).

 

[WarmAndSCSI]

Your typically going to get 70 mbps (maximum) throughput using TCP on a 100Base-TX Full Duplex network.

 

[JackMDS]

During the last few years there were many threads posted by network?s home users concerning their LAN?s "Speed". Many times we get the ?official? answer, or the pros make remarks that derive from the use of professional hardware on professional networks,

It seems pretty clear that the majority of Entry level LANs using Windows with Windows software. With a good function network, hovering around 50-80Mb/sec. (Full Duplex etc.).

Posts like cleverhandle, BurnItDwn, (Thank you) is what I am looking for.

P.S. It will be nice if guys like Spidery, Scott, Garion, TG, Skying, and many more will join too, and tell us what they actually get from their humble home network (providing it is humble).

 

[WarmAndSCSI]

I have a Dell PowerConnect 2016 10/100 switch (a real steal - only like $99), standard CAT5-E cabling and various 100Base-TX NICs. The NIC in my server which I run b/w tests from is an Intel Pro/100 Server adapter. I get an average of 71 Mbps when transferring files using SMB and FTP on any given 100Base-TX computer in my house and 5.5 Mbps when using my laptop.

 

[skyking]

when I get my network reassembled, I'll transfer some files
I had a bit of an event 'supping up my router

 

[ScottMac]

Sure, no problem.

Switch, one stream (client to server), TCP ~ 92Mbps
Hub, one stream (client to server), TCP, ~89Mbps

Switch, two streams (2 clients to 1 server), TCP, ~94Mbps aggregate
Hub, two streams (2 clients to 1 server), TCP, ~ 87Mbps aggregate

We also tested UDP, and 2-to-1 + 1 (two streams from client to server, with one additional stream client to client)

The rest of the test results are at my web site (still, after all these months): ScottMac.Net

Click on "Hub Vs Switch" to see the whole test group.

We tested a popular consumer-grade switch versus a popular consumer-grade 100 meg Hub (on loan from JackMDS, Thanks again Jack!).

The tests were conducted using industry recognized analyzers (SmartBits, Chariot) in a Lab environment, using the same components and certified cabling (except the switch and Hub, of course). Every reasonable effort was made to keep the tests fair and representitive for both sides.

This was done some time ago (close to two years, maybe more), but the equipment tested is still on the retail shelves (at least the switch is).

As for the home network, I now use a Cisco 3550 EMI as a core switch, with 2950-Ts for edge / workgroup switches (Gig trunks to the core). From the Sun Ultra 60 to my dual Xeon box, I'm hanging in at the mid-to-high eighties for file transfers ... all the other systems (except the laptops) are eighty-ish or a little lower. The laptops are wireless and (IIRC) hanging in at around 4-6Mbps (3COM 8000 AP and NICs, 128bit Dynamic Keys). The ATM system is down, but used to get ~100-120Mbps (theoretical MAX is 137) over the same ELAN (or Classic IP Subnet). I never ran it in native ATM mode.

FWIW

Scott

 

[spidey07]

From the Sun Ultra 60 to my dual Xeon box, I'm hanging in at the mid-to-high eighties for file transfers ... all the other systems (except the laptops) are eighty-ish or a little lower

About the same here. 80s-high 80s.

Various OSs and hardware.

-edit- a lot of the confusion comes from network guys like Scottmac and myself who measure things in Mbs actually moved over a network. To others they measure Megabytes of actual payload which can be misleading.

-double edit- that is from a single transfer. The speeds approach 95 Mbs if I have multiples steams going on.

 

[JackMDS]

Thanks Guys.

Keep it coming.

 

[saimike]

if i'm reading this correctly, from 80+ Mbps (bits) bits-moved-through-network, we get about ~60 Mbps payload-moved-through-network. where did the 20Mbps goto? ACK? re-transmits? header?

 

[Shide1]

High 70's, but it depends what I am transfering.

 

[Mucman]

I remember doing several tests using Windows Explorer, FTP, sftp to transfer files in my old network and performance was restricted
by the protocols (smb,ssh) or by the hardware itself. When I did a file transfer to my LAN ftp server I would get 8.5MB/s for about 10-15s,
then it would slow to a crawl. The machine only had 128MB of RAM and I figured that it was committing data to the HD and win98 had a
hard time handling the FTP transfer and the disk IO at the same time. Using 'netperf' on my FreeBSD box, it came up saying that my
network line speed was ~75-80Mbps.

Going to test the network at my new pad and see how the line speeds are (I didn't build this network).

Here are the results of my new network

Recv ----- Send ----- Send -------------
Socket --- Socket --- Message -- Elapsed
Size ------ Size ------ Size ------- Time Throughput
bytes ---- bytes ---- bytes ----- secs. 10^6bits/sec

57344 ---- 32768 ---- 32768 ---- 10.02 - 47.53

 

[JackMDS]

TTT

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Shide1
High 70's, but it depends what I am transfering.

So please tell us what you gets when you tranfer A, B, or C?
This is the whole point of the Thread.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Via netbios, it's like if I was using a local drive, but last time I checked, via http it's about 200K/sec. I'm using crappy win98/apache though that's why. I'll soon be setting up a pentium 100 server with red hat. I hope it will run on 32MB of ram though, it won't accept my other stick of 32 that I got. Oh, my lan is 100mbps via a linksys router.

By the way, is there a program to measure my connection speed, kind of like the online ones such as dslreports? It would be interesting to get better stats than what I have.

 

[JackMDS]

This provides a very good measure of "Speed".

Link: Qcheck A Free Utility for Network Troubleshooting from NetIQ!).

 

[Soybomb]

I didn't do anything with the unix boxes at the moment but using Q check between 3 machines on the lan real quick with a data size of 1000 kB:

Computer 1 = 2000 Pro with a SIS onboard nic
Computer 2 = XP pro with a 3com 3c905 nic
computer 3 = laptop with xp pro and an orinoco 802.11 card with wep enabled (excellent signal strength, 11Mbps)

1-2: 94Mbps
1/2-3: 4.2 Mbps

It'd be cool if we get a standard piece of test software for the platforms and get some numbers including os, nic, and switch/hub info. Do we need something that does a more sustained transfer though than Qcheck? Not that I don't think my linksys switch they're on isn't decent but 94Mbps just seems a little too optimistic

 

[tboneuls]

Originally posted by: WarmAndSCSI
Your typically going to get 70 mbps (maximum) throughput using TCP on a 100Base-TX Full Duplex network.

I have maxed out in the mid or high 80s, but the real limiting factor in my opinion is your hard drive speed. This is all on 100 Base TX switches with full duplex. Most of my cards are Linksys' LNE100TX. I also have som FA311s. Hope that helps.

 

[skyking]

OK , I did some testing.
Using windows drag and drop to my samba server, I had a miserable agrregate performance on a big transfer of only 28mbps.
This was a 3.6 gig folder of MP3's, in subfolders.
Later on, I used ssh, and got individual file speeds of 1110kBps, or very near 90 mbps.
Then the samba server NIC croaked!!:Q
Never saw such a thing before. It was a netgear, I lost ssh, and all the lights on it lit up, even without a cable plugged in!
To make matters worse, it is an old AT box, and I had just installed a keyboard dummy emulator to get rid of the keyboard, so I had to hard boot it. OUCH!

 

[Mucman]

Originally posted by: skyking
OK , I did some testing.
Using windows drag and drop to my samba server, I had a miserable agrregate performance on a big transfer of only 28mbps.
This was a 3.6 gig folder of MP3's, in subfolders.
Later on, I used ssh, and got individual file speeds of 1110kBps, or very near 90 mbps.
Then the samba server NIC croaked!!:Q
Never saw such a thing before. It was a netgear, I lost ssh, and all the lights on it lit up, even without a cable plugged in!
To make matters worse, it is an old AT box, and I had just installed a keyboard dummy emulator to get rid of the keyboard, so I had to hard boot it. OUCH!

You got 90Mbps using ssh? When doing ssh file transfers I could only get 500KB/s.

 

[skyking]

Oh, man, got bit by the math bug again! goes back to the drawing board............
I lost a zero in there somewhere
EDIT: qcheck, one direction, 1000KB size: 93Mbps. going from the other machine, it varies between 83-86.