What actual speed should I be getting connected to a Gigabit ethernet port?

[Wabbitzzz]

title

I am referring to LAN speed, not isp speed

 

[BrightCandle]

1gbit/s, are you expecting a different answer some how?!

 

[raf051888]

Are you referring to connected speed or transfer speed?

 

[Tsavo]

Depends on your NICs and drives.

My network does 125 MB/s.

 

[JackMDS]

If you mean LAN transfer in MB/sec. (B=Byte)

Depending on the hardware and TCP optimization.

Mediocre users get about 40-60MB/sec.

Good users get 60 MB/sec. to about 80MB/sec.

Under really rare conditions.

131 x 8 = 1048Mb/sec. Real Giga.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

1gbit/s, are you expecting a different answer some how?!

Here is my speedtest use LAN Speedtest when wired to my computer to router.

Can someone interpret this for me please? I'm completely new to all this networking stuff, trying to understand it more.

This test was with the file size setting to 150MB

I must be doing the test wrong because 1 gigabit = 125MB/s maximum, so why am I getting +/- 300MB/s when I do this LAN speedtest? Something seems off.

 

[Tsavo]

Good users get 60 MB/sec. to about 80MB/sec.

Under really rare conditions.

Not at all rare with good hardware.

 

[theevilsharpie]

If your application is testing network throughput, and you're getting 2-3Gb/s over Gigabit Ethernet and you're not using any type of link aggregation, your testing application is screwed up.

If you want accurate results, test with iperf instead.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

If your application is testing network throughput, and you're getting 2-3Gb/s over Gigabit Ethernet and you're not using any type of link aggregation, your testing application is screwed up.

If you want accurate results, test with iperf instead.

That's what I'm thinking. I got confused when I thought I had it understood that 1 gigabit = 1000Mbps = 125MB/s.

And then I'm getting 275MB/s. Didn't make sense to me.

I must be doing something wrong with the speedtest.

 

[Gryz]

When an application says: "packet length: 150,000,000" you know the writer of the application has no clue what he's talking about. Performance testing is an art. If this guy can't get terminology right, I am sure he can't get the fine details of testing right. Use another application.

 

[azazel1024]

If you mean LAN transfer in MB/sec. (B=Byte)

Depending on the hardware and TCP optimization.

Mediocre users get about 40-60MB/sec.

Good users get 60 MB/sec. to about 80MB/sec.

Under really rare conditions.

131 x 8 = 1048Mb/sec. Real Giga.

1048mbps shows caching effects.

The absolute maximum using 9k jumbo frames and TCP/IP is roughly 960-970Mbps. Anything faster is showing caching. UDP can be higher because it has tiny headers and no ack packets.

My Intel gigabit adapters max out at 117.5MB/sec (940Mbps) using 9k jumbo frames. My Realtek adapters get around 112-114MB/sec. I've repeatedly tested this using large files steady state. I can get 235MB/sec with a pair of Intel adapter and SMB3 large file transfers (when my disk array can keep up).

 

[Wabbitzzz]

When an application says: "packet length: 150,000,000" you know the writer of the application has no clue what he's talking about. Performance testing is an art. If this guy can't get terminology right, I am sure he can't get the fine details of testing right. Use another application.

Any recommendations? I couldn't find anything else really.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

250 MB/s up and 400 MB/s down? When you ran your LAN speed test, what IP address are you reading sending to/receiving from? Did you type in the IP address of your own computer?

 

[Wabbitzzz]

250 MB/s up and 400 MB/s down? When you ran your LAN speed test, what IP address are you reading sending to/receiving from? Did you type in the IP address of your own computer?

I read the help and it just said to choose a folder. I chose my documents. I assumed this was just asking where to put the test file.

What should I be putting in the destination box? The IP of a different computer on the network?

I know this is probably a really stupid question but I'm very new to all this and trying to sort out some problems I've been having with super slow speeds randomly on and off.

Here is an article about the program:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/224327/LAN_Speed_Test.html

In the image that guy did the exact same thing I did and chose a folder, but got a more realistic number.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Any recommendations?

iperf is the best benchmark you'll get for free.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

iperf is the best benchmark you'll get for free.

I'll check it out, but I'm confident my issue is not the program. It is a very popular test program recommended by different sites.

It is a problem with my input but I'm not sure what to do to test it correctly.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

I read the help and it just said to choose a folder. I chose my documents. I assumed this was just asking where to put the test file.

What should I be putting in the destination box? The IP of a different computer on the network?

I know this is probably a really stupid question but I'm very new to all this and trying to sort out some problems I've been having with super slow speeds randomly on and off.

Here is an article about the program:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/224327/LAN_Speed_Test.html

In the image that guy did the exact same thing I did and chose a folder, but got a more realistic number.

What am I doing wrong?

According to other tutorials I found, such as:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6923783_test-lan-speed.html
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...ur-network-five-ways-to-measure-network-speed
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/test-home-network-speed-decipher-results/

The "Folder" you select is supposed to be on a Windows share on a second PC. This makes sense because in order for the test app to measure your LAN network speeds, it has to write a file over the network and then read it back over the network.

I think what you did was that you specified a local directory on your PC's hard drive, or more likely, a solid state drive, since you have read/write speeds of 250MB/s and 401 MB/s. But basically, your original test did not send any data over the LAN network at all.

The only reason I can think of why the pcworld tutorial showed realistic speeds is that maybe the guy ran the test on his laptop, so his test app measured the read/write speeds of his laptop hard drive, which isn't that fast.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

According to other tutorials I found, such as:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6923783_test-lan-speed.html
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanw...ur-network-five-ways-to-measure-network-speed
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/test-home-network-speed-decipher-results/

The "Folder" you select is supposed to be on a Windows share on a second PC. This makes sense because in order for the test app to measure your LAN network speeds, it has to write a file over the network and then read it back over the network.

I think what you did was that you specified a local directory on your PC's hard drive, or more likely, a solid state drive, since you have read/write speeds of 250MB/s and 401 MB/s. But basically, your original test did not send any data over the LAN network at all.

The only reason I can think of why the pcworld tutorial showed realistic speeds is that maybe the guy ran the test on his laptop, so his test app measured the read/write speeds of his laptop hard drive, which isn't that fast.

Thanks a lot. Kind of feel like an idiot. I indeed do have an SSD so I guess I was just testing the speed of the drive.

Oops :'(

So I suppose I need to set something like that up on a second computer in order to do this test then.

I'll look into how to do on the google machine because I have no idea what I'm doing currently. I assume when I set up a share folder on that second PC that I use the local IP of that computer to access it. And enter that in the box where I was originally choosing my documents folder. (oops)

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Thanks a lot. Kind of feel like an idiot. I indeed do have an SSD so I guess I was just testing the speed of the drive.

Oops :'(

So I suppose I need to set something like that up on a second computer in order to do this test then.

I'll look into how to do on the google machine because I have no idea what I'm doing currently. I assume when I set up a share folder on that second PC that I use the local IP of that computer to access it. And enter that in the box where I was originally choosing my documents folder. (oops)

That's right, although it would probably be easier to use the 2nd PC's name instead of IP. So, you enter something like this in your test app while on your first PC:

\\NameOfPC2\shareddir

And as for sharing a directory, it's been a while since I've used Windows, but I think you right click on any directory and go to Properties, and there's a Share tab.

 

[azazel1024]

Right click on the folder/drive, go to properties, sharing and click on advanced sharing. Then just tick the box to share the drive/folder and if you want you can type in a name for how it is shared.

Windows will only use credentials on the current machine. So if you have a user account of pappy and password of pappy1 on it, you'll either need the same acount and password on the machine connecting to it, or windows will prompt you for the user name and password and you'll need to enter the account that is on the server.

Part of why I have multiple accounts on my server to slightly simplify my other family members connecting to shares on the server (that and I have them setup with limited permissions).

Also instead of testing using a program, you can just transfer some files directly and see what windows tells you it is tranfering at. Different methods have different overhead, sure (robocopy I get a slight boost to around 119MB/sec compared to using file explorer which is 117.5MB/sec. Synctoy hits about 114MB/sec due to higher overhead). Still a valid test, especially if that is how you are normally going to be transfering files.

Small files will transfer at a lower rate than larger files regardless of the storage subsystem (though that also impacts it). LAN manager in windows is opening a session for each file that is transfered (or in the case of SMB3+ on Windows 8+, multiple sessions for a file) and that takes a certain amount of time between the CPU and network stack. A very, very tiny amount of time, but for small files it ends up equalling a pretty significant overhead. So if you are transfering 1GB files, you might max at 117MB/sec, but if you go to something like 100KB files, even transfering SSD to SSD which have awesome small file performance, you might drop down in to the 60-100MB/sec range because of the network and CPU overhead transfering the smaller files.

 

[JimKiler]

I tested with iperf a couple years ago and remember getting ~230MB/s which i thought was too high. I was even using a gigabyte NIC on my netbook. I never did retest with my work laptop.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

Thanks for the help Azazel. I think I got it working. I shared a folder on my Windows 8 PC.

On my Mac I connected to server using smb://iphere, logged in using local pc account info and saw all my shared folders.

I tested your option of not using the speed test program and instead just looking at transfer speed. However on my Mac it doesn't give specific info (shocker). So I couldn't just test using a file as of now.

I did however speedtest by choosing the shared folder on the test program and the results were absolutely terrible as I expected. The router I use is supplied by my ISP and unless there is a different issue causing slow speed this is my laughable speed result(not even a MB/s :

Mac was wired into gigabit and shared folder PC connected through 500Mbps Powerline

The whole reason I'm doing this is to confirm this router is a POS. I've read so much about it online that I wanted to check. I've had problems with it for a year now.

Anytime you get 2 users + streaming video it just crashes. Everything stops working. Wireless transmit rates (2.4ghz N rated at 300Mbps) drops suddenly from 217Mbps to around 5Mpbs while the router is at a standstill. I have 30Mpbs down and 15 up so isp speed is not the problem.

 

[BrightCandle]

Those powerline networks can perform well below their rated speed if there is interference on the power, which there quite often is. It might not be anything to do with your router performance. It sounds like you have quite a complex network setup, it might be worth drawing that out so we can recommend some isolating tests that will determine which part is causing the issue.

 

[Wabbitzzz]

Those powerline networks can perform well below their rated speed if there is interference on the power, which there quite often is. It might not be anything to do with your router performance. It sounds like you have quite a complex network setup, it might be worth drawing that out so we can recommend some isolating tests that will determine which part is causing the issue.

I hope you're right. I'm going to wait for a family member to get home with their computer and wire it to the network and do a gigabit -> gigabit speed test for optimal results.

Although I do know the router has problems, when I try to transfer a large file over wireless the router chokes and down for a few minutes. Or having multiple users just watching a youtube video, it all gets messed up. Something about it can't handle a certain amount of traffic, once it exceeds that it starts acting real weird. It's a modem router combo box, I'm going to be getting a separate router soon and bridge this box and only use it as the modem.

Lots of complaints about it on dslreports.com, it's a shame because my isp forces me to use this box

 

[Fardringle]

I would try iperf (or the graphical version, called jperf). It tests the actual speed of the network without relying on hard disk read/write speeds. That will give you a better idea if the problem is with the network, or with the speed of the shared drive.