Network Utilization & Transfer Speeds on Gigabit Network?

Speed · 3 Jul 2009 at 22:52

Hi Guys,

I've just purchased a new router, the Linksys WRT320N which has a 4 port Gigabit switch built in. As most of my network is wired, that's perfect for me and a cheap and easy way to speed up file transfers (which we do a lot of).

Now I have a Download and Storage Server in the loft running Vista x64, my main pc runs Windows 7 x64 7232 and there are two other computers, one running Vista x32 and the other running Vista x64. All the PCs use onboard 10/100/1000 NICs and with the exception of one, which is run through a 10/100 switch for a networked laser printer they should all get 1 Gbps.

Now my Windows 7 PC is fine, I get 60-80% network Utilization when transfering from the server in the loft via a mapped networked drive. 1Gb files take about 15 seconds to copy over. I'm guessing the last 20% or so is more down to drive speed and other factors but that doesn't matter to me.

Now I did some testing and the Vista Pc's never seem to peak over 30MB/s during transfer, however I was using one set of files and strangely on others they get higher. But that aside I've never seen them get above 40% of Network Utilization on the 1 Gbps link (Info from Windows Task Manger), which while not slow isn't exactly great either. All the PCs are using 7200RPM drives and the Vista x64 PC that my sister uses and transfers a lot with has the same model of 500Gb Seagate 7200.11 drive that the Windows 7 PC uses.

So is Vista just terrible at network performance or can I do something about it by tweaking settings?

I've look at forcing 1Gbps Dulpex on the PCs under the NIC properties, but the only one that has that listed is the Server and that's already set. All the PCs have updated drivers and the only other thing aside from OS that I can see might be cable length, as the Windows 7 PC is right next to the router, but that can't be it surely? The others use about 15-20m of cat 5e cable.

Hope someone who knows more about this can clear things up.

Thanks,

Mark

user1453 · 4 Jul 2009 at 00:41

when you start dealing with gigabit metworks you start running into bottlenecks such as hdd read write speed, could the vista pc have a slower hdd?

Speed · 4 Jul 2009 at 00:44

Speed said:
All the PCs are using 7200RPM drives and the Vista x64 PC that my sister uses and transfers a lot with has the same model of 500Gb Seagate 7200.11 drive that the Windows 7 PC uses.

Unfortunately not as mentioned above. It could well be Vista!

DRZ · 4 Jul 2009 at 01:16

I found that it depends very much on the network card you use, but Vista's networking stack doesn't get the fastest transfer speeds unless you tweak the TCP window size (or turn off the auto tuning entirely). There is also another setting that totally escapes me that boosted my file transfer speeds significantly.

breadturbo · 4 Jul 2009 at 01:44

i had some of those 7200.11's slowed right down before death (not trying to to give you bad thoughts)

between my vista64 and another vista32 both raid i can get an easy 85-90mbps rate
but from mine to xp32 i stuggle to top 20mbps also both raid

all comps use D-Link DGE-530T cards

Speed · 4 Jul 2009 at 02:30

DRZ said:
I found that it depends very much on the network card you use, but Vista's networking stack doesn't get the fastest transfer speeds unless you tweak the TCP window size (or turn off the auto tuning entirely). There is also another setting that totally escapes me that boosted my file transfer speeds significantly.

Ah right, if you remember let me know!

breadturbo said:
i had some of those 7200.11's slowed right down before death (not trying to to give you bad thoughts)

between my vista64 and another vista32 both raid i can get an easy 85-90mbps rate
but from mine to xp32 i stuggle to top 20mbps also both raid

all comps use D-Link DGE-530T cards

Hmm, what type of raid were you using?

Yeah I'll run a test on the other 7200.11 just to be on the safe side.

user1453 · 4 Jul 2009 at 10:50

I believe the xp ip stack may not be rated to use up all the bandwidth provided by gigabit ethernet

Rabtech · 4 Jul 2009 at 17:13

30MB-40MB/s sounds about right for gigabit unless you start playing with Jumbo Frames etc. One of your machines will be hitting a bottleneck somewhere rather than the router causing the issue. The highest Ive seen is about 50-60MB/s between two machines with onboard Intel PCI-E bus based gigabit adaptors (rather than via PCI etc).

Dist · 4 Jul 2009 at 17:41

Rabtech said:
30Mb-40Mb/s sounds about right for gigabit unless you start playing with Jumbo Frames etc. One of your machines will be hitting a bottleneck somewhere rather than the router causing the issue. The highest Ive seen is about 50-60Mb/s between two machines with onboard Intel PCI-E bus based gigabit adaptors (rather than via PCI etc).

I assume you mean MB and not Mb, because 30 to 40Mb/s on a 1000Mb/s network is rubish. I'm on vista, and when transfering to another vista machine (on a gigabit network) i can get arround 140Mb/s to 160Mb/s. In some rare cases i can hit over 240Mb/s, but thats rare.

Rabtech · 4 Jul 2009 at 17:47

Dist said:
I assume you mean MB and not Mb, because 30 to 40Mb/s on a 1000Mb/s network is rubish. I'm on vista, and when transfering to another vista machine (on a gigabit network) i can get arround 140Mb/s to 160Mb/s. In some rare cases i can hit over 240Mb/s, but thats rare.

Apologies, yep I meant megabytes a second (MB/s) not megabits a second (Mb/s).

Edited my post above.

Phemo · 4 Jul 2009 at 18:46

What service pack do you have installed on the Vista machines? Before any service packs I was only seeing 30 to 40MB/sec, but after SP1 came along I started seeing between 60MB and 75 ish MB/sec. I haven't ran any TCP optimisation rubbish or tweaked any settings at all.

Between my Vista and Windows 7 PCs I'm also seeing speeds up to around 75MB/sec which isn't too bad at all.

Speed · 4 Jul 2009 at 22:14

user1453 said:
I believe the xp ip stack may not be rated to use up all the bandwidth provided by gigabit ethernet

Is that what Vista uses but not Windows 7?

Rabtech said:
30MB-40MB/s sounds about right for gigabit unless you start playing with Jumbo Frames etc. One of your machines will be hitting a bottleneck somewhere rather than the router causing the issue. The highest Ive seen is about 50-60MB/s between two machines with onboard Intel PCI-E bus based gigabit adaptors (rather than via PCI etc).

Yeah, I've seen higher on the Windows 7 PC, but I expect it adverages out as around 60MB/s to 70MB/s as the larger the file the more it seems to slow down near the end. It seems to vary with the files, even the same time and similar size appear to have different speeds. What does Jumbo Frames do then? I've seen it mentioned before.

Phemo said:
What service pack do you have installed on the Vista machines? Before any service packs I was only seeing 30 to 40MB/sec, but after SP1 came along I started seeing between 60MB and 75 ish MB/sec. I haven't ran any TCP optimisation rubbish or tweaked any settings at all.

Between my Vista and Windows 7 PCs I'm also seeing speeds up to around 75MB/sec which isn't too bad at all.

SP2 on the Server PC running Vista x64, SP1 on my Sisters Vista x64 install and SP1 on the Vista x32 install downstairs. My sisters PC is what I've done most of the testing with as it's more likely to have stuff transferred to it than the downstairs Pc which runs through a 10/100 switch normally anyways. Maybe I'll install SP2 on my sisters PC and see if that improves anything.

DRZ · 5 Jul 2009 at 15:39

Have you tried running iPerf on your network at all? That will remove the drives from the equation and tell you where your problem lies.

If the switch(es?) on your network support Jumbo Frames, enabling it on all of your NICs will significantly increase your transfer speeds. 9k is the "optimal" size if you dont use IPv6.

Speed · 5 Jul 2009 at 15:46

DRZ said:
Have you tried running iPerf on your network at all? That will remove the drives from the equation and tell you where your problem lies.

If the switch(es?) on your network support Jumbo Frames, enabling it on all of your NICs will significantly increase your transfer speeds. 9k is the "optimal" size if you dont use IPv6.

Would I have to disable IPv6 for that though? or would 9k be fine without any modifications? Someone said to me that I should disable IPv6 but not done it yet.

DRZ · 5 Jul 2009 at 15:55

No need to disable IPv6 at all, IPv6 can handle frame sizes of 4Gb (!) thats all.

Here is what I would do if I were you:

1) Run iPerf between two or more machines on your network to establish a baseline speed
2) Enable Jumbo Frames (9k) on each machine
3) Run iPerf again and see what the performance gain is like
4) Check file transfer speeds
5) Check all other network functions (internet, network printing etc)

Then depending on those results, I would make a decision to use Jumbo Frames or not.

user1453 · 5 Jul 2009 at 15:58

I was talkning about the windows xp stack I believe the vista and win 7 stacks are much better

Speed · 5 Jul 2009 at 16:45

DRZ said:
No need to disable IPv6 at all, IPv6 can handle frame sizes of 4Gb (!) thats all.

Here is what I would do if I were you:

1) Run iPerf between two or more machines on your network to establish a baseline speed
2) Enable Jumbo Frames (9k) on each machine
3) Run iPerf again and see what the performance gain is like
4) Check file transfer speeds
5) Check all other network functions (internet, network printing etc)

Then depending on those results, I would make a decision to use Jumbo Frames or not.

Thanks, I'll give that a go.

user1453 said:
I was talkning about the windows xp stack I believe the vista and win 7 stacks are much better

I see, doesn't really apply here.

Dewotter · 5 Jul 2009 at 16:50

One thing I do to speed up network transfers is turing off Remote Differential COmpression from the Windows Features.

Type optionalfeatures into the Start Search and get rid.

Dist · 5 Jul 2009 at 16:54

Any idea how i can find out if my switch supports jumbo frames? Its one of the older types of netgear gigabit switches (Its one of the ones with a blue metal case, not the new type that are plastic).

DRZ · 5 Jul 2009 at 17:05

Dist said:
Any idea how i can find out if my switch supports jumbo frames? Its one of the older types of netgear gigabit switches (Its one of the ones with a blue metal case, not the new type that are plastic).

IIRC, the GS108 does support jumbo frames.