Gigabit lan speeds

dragon · 10-03-2008, 20:14

Just wandered what sort of speeds I should be expecting over 1Gbit/s Lan.

I seem to push around 25 - 40MB/s on a Single transfer over FTP and about 20 -25 MB/s over samba

I suspect I could maybe get a bit more out of it If I was transfering to Different drives on the "server" machine reading from multiple drives on the other machines...

Only 3 of my machines have 1Gbit connectivity anyway.

1) Macbook (when its on the same switch as the Dtop, if its not its limited to either wi-fi or powerline speeds)

2) Desktop (Via PCI card as onboard nic is only a 10/100)

3) "server" Onboard nic on the NF4.

10-03-2008, 20:17

doesnt it depend on the overheads or am I way off track here

downquark1 · 10-03-2008, 20:17

Remember at some point you may be maxing out the read-rate from whatever disk you are downloading from.

Druchii · 10-03-2008, 20:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon

Just wandered what sort of speeds I should be expecting over 1Gbit/s Lan.

I seem to push around 25 - 40MB/s on a Single transfer over FTP and about 20 -25 MB/s over samba

I suspect I could maybe get a bit more out of it If I was transfering to Different drives on the "server" machine reading from multiple drives on the other machines...

Only 3 of my machines have 1Gbit connectivity anyway.

1) Macbook (when its on the same switch as the Dtop, if its not its limited to either wi-fi or powerline speeds)

2) Desktop (Via PCI card as onboard nic is only a 10/100)

3) "server" Onboard nic on the NF4.

Aren't the NF4 Lan cards known to be rather bad at times, due to their built in hardware firewall?

Anywho, which cabling are you using? Ideally for 1GBps speed you should be using Cat6 class, at a stretch, Cat5e. Cat5 just will not do.
40MB/s equates to 320Mbps. So, only a third of your potential. However, how fast can your servers drives actually write? I know manhy standard hard drives top out around 60MB/s. And with a slow processor, maybe 40ish is tops?

Are the drives regularly defragmented? And what are the specs of the "server"?

Lot's of things on this one.

You could even try setting everythings duplex mode to "1Gbps Full Duplex", or half duplex. (Ask, if you don't know how)

What OS's are you using?

dragon · 10-03-2008, 20:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Druchii

Aren't the NF4 Lan cards known to be rather bad at times, due to their built in hardware firewall?

Anywho, which cabling are you using? Ideally for 1GBps speed you should be using Cat6 class, at a stretch, Cat5e. Cat5 just will not do.
40MB/s equates to 320Mbps. So, only a third of your potential. However, how fast can your servers drives actually write? I know manhy standard hard drives top out around 60MB/s. And with a slow processor, maybe 40ish is tops?

Are the drives regularly defragmented? And what are the specs of the "server"?

Lot's of things on this one.

You could even try setting everythings duplex mode to "1Gbps Full Duplex", or half duplex. (Ask, if you don't know how)

What OS's are you using?

I figured it would be topping out the drives probably.

"Server" is actually an old desktop running Ubuntu 7.10 server
3800+ x2
1gb ram (2x 512mb)
74gb raptor
80gb raptor
160gb 7200rpm Ide
160gb 7200rpm Sata
200gb 7200rpm Sata
120gb 7200rpm IDE
Abit AN8 motherboard.
Basically it had a large case So I shoved all the HDD's I had left over from PC's being replaced/upgraded in it rather than have them sit around gathering dust.

I was writing to one of the 7200RPM drives...

Re: NF4 hardware firewall, AFAIK its only active if you load the Nforce drivers with active armor in (And im not even sure its in the latest ones anyway) It definatly shouldn't be active under Linux.

Dtop is running Vista x64... I was more interested to know if the speeds are in-line with what others using Gbit lan are getting.

Cables are Cat5e but then again most of them are very short runs (under 2 Metres the "server" is under the desk and the pc is next to it pretty much... apart from a couple 8 Metre cables that go around the room to the other side (although there nothing on the other end of them atm)

keithwalton · 10-03-2008, 22:05

GBit was never intendid for raw point to point speed, but more being able to handle multiple simultaneous connections over the same lines. That and from programs running in memory linked to the memory on other machines.

There are multiple bottlenecks in your config,

hard drives will be the main one, in single drive mode peak brand new hughe ide / sata ones do 70mb/sec, raid 0 them and that figure nearly doubles.
15k rpm scsi drives do around 100mb/sec.

The way your gbit controller is connected is also usually a bottleneck.
If your using a pci card that has a max b/w of 133mb/sec (just over 1GBit) and this is shared with all other devices connected to the pci bus (usually hard drive controllers in older machines are as well)

Some motherboards connect GBe via the pci or pci-e bus to the southbridge (then north -> south bridge links can be a bottleneck).

The best implementation so far is in intel server (and some desktop boards) called csa, which connects the GBe to the northbridge

dragon · 10-03-2008, 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by keithwalton

GBit was never intendid for raw point to point speed, but more being able to handle multiple simultaneous connections over the same lines. That and from programs running in memory linked to the memory on other machines.

There are multiple bottlenecks in your config,

hard drives will be the main one, in single drive mode peak brand new hughe ide / sata ones do 70mb/sec, raid 0 them and that figure nearly doubles.
15k rpm scsi drives do around 100mb/sec.

The way your gbit controller is connected is also usually a bottleneck.
If your using a pci card that has a max b/w of 133mb/sec (just over 1GBit) and this is shared with all other devices connected to the pci bus (usually hard drive controllers in older machines are as well)

Some motherboards connect GBe via the pci or pci-e bus to the southbridge (then north -> south bridge links can be a bottleneck).

The best implementation so far is in intel server (and some desktop boards) called csa, which connects the GBe to the northbridge

Fair enough and I understand that only really put it in because I needed to replace my 10/100 switch and it wasn't much more expensive... Just wanted to know if the speeds I was pushing though it was resonable for off the shelf consumer kit and if they were about on par with what anyone else was getting..

Its quite nice to be able to write to a drive on the storage machine almost as quickly, if not as quickly as if it were a local drive