Direct PC to PC connection

[Shooty*]

Hi guys,
I just built a home server running Windows Home Server. It's an mATX mobo with an athlon 64 in it. It has a gigabit LAN connection.

I'm trying to transfer 1.5tb of dvd rips and other media from my HTPC to the server (it's going to be used as a backup). I left it doing this over night, at the rate of about 4.5 meg a second over my home plug network, using my O2 box router as a switch.

I came down this morning, 8 hours later, and it had transferred about 20 - 30 DVDs. Out of 90

So I thought "I know! I'll link the gigabit network connection on my HTPC to the gigabit LAN connection on my server! I bet that'll FLY!"

Nope.

2.3 meg a second, so it would take even longer! Can someone explain the logic of that to me, please?

Think I'm going to move stuff from HTPC > USB drive > Home Server, but that's fairly laborious as well.

I'm starting to regret moving away from my DNS323 NAS box, which gave me transfer speeds of about 7.5 meg a second each way. I don't understand why my home server box has about 2/3 of that speed on the same home plug network. Duplication in WHS is off, so it's not that. With a whizzier CPU in it, and more ram, and all, I thought it would be faster. Had to change it as I needed the upgradeability.

[burble]

Does the O2 router have a GigE switch or is it only 10/100Mbit?

Why not grab a crossover network cable and connect the PC's together directly?

[Shooty*]

The O2, as far as I can tell, is only 10/100Mbit. With the DNS 323, I got 7meg a second rate, with the server PC, it's lower. All other equipment is the same.


Um... I connected them together with a CAT5 style network cable throught their lan ports, direct. One Lan port straight to the other. that's when the rate dropped to 2.5 meg a second. Is that different from what you suggest?


Edit: I'm looking at crossover cables now on Wiki. Someone please tell me this in Noddy language: How the f**k does that differ from a straight, normal network cable?

And, question 2, is there some kind of super whizzy cable I should be buying for my home plug network to get speeds up, or are bog standard cheapy ones (realistically) as good as any other?

[burble]

The speed dropped when you connected them directly by cat5? That's a bit odd. Have a look in device manager and see if you've got jumbo frames enabled.

[aidanjt]

You need an Ethernet cable wired in a particular way for it to work correctly. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

Oh, and remember, while your WHS box has a gigabit NIC, it will only write to disk as fast as the disk it's writing to. Because WHS has no kind of striping abilities that Linux's LVM has, and it doesn't support RAID arrays either, again, unlike Linux NAS boxes.

[Shooty*]

The speed dropped when you connected them directly by cat5? That's a bit odd. Have a look in device manager and see if you've got jumbo frames enabled.

I'm afraid I said "Cat5" because that's what I thought all network cables are. I've never really delved properly into the whole networking thing before. I'm looking at Scan's range of cables now. But, yeah, the cable I used to connect them directly is the same one I had been using to connect one of them to the hom plug network, so was a pretty standard, normal network cable.

Whats the difference between Cat5 and Cat6?

[burble]

You need an Ethernet cable wired in a particular way for it to work correctly. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

Not necessarily - a lot of modern network cards are auto switching so they'll detect a PC to PC connection and negate the need for the crossover cable. If it was the case that one of the cards couldn't switch then the connection wouldn't work at all - it wouldn't run slowly.

[burble]

Whats the difference between Cat5 and Cat6?

That's a good point - check exactly what cable it is (it should say in the outer cladding). If it's cat 5 then you may get GigE out of it, but really you need at least cat 5e to get GigE.

[aidanjt]

Not necessarily - a lot of modern network cards are auto switching so they'll detect a PC to PC connection and negate the need for the crossover cable. If it was the case that one of the cards couldn't switch then the connection wouldn't work at all - it wouldn't run slowly.

That's an assumption. You can't be sure of that without knowing which chips are being used. Gigabit also works with the physical pairs a little differently than 100Base-TX.

[burble]

That's an assumption. You can't be sure of that without knowing which chips are being used. Gigabit also works with the physical pairs a little differently than 100Base-TX.

No, it's fact. If at least 1 card didn't support auto switching then the cards wouldn't even link with a straight network cable.

GigE does indeed use the pairs a little differently - it uses all 4 pairs whereas 10/100 only uses 2.

[Shooty*]

I shall check the cables, and let you know. I'll also post mobo details for info about network adapters.

One's an M2N68AM Plus (Server).

The other is a similar Asus, but I can't recall exactly... no, wait, it's on my HTPC thread, hang on... M3A78-EM (HTPC)

[aidanjt]

No, it's fact. If at least 1 card didn't support auto switching then the cards wouldn't even link with a straight network cable.

GigE does indeed use the pairs a little differently - it uses all 4 pairs whereas 10/100 only uses 2.

Again with the assumptions. A chip may support 100Base-TX auto-negotiation without supporting Gigabit auto-negotiation. Any cable or NIC damage and/or driver bugs can also cause intermittent renegotiation to 10Base-T rates. Or there could be duplex mismatches, the list of possible problems are lengthy.

[burble]

They're 'assumptions' based on 10 years working in the industry but if you choose to think different then that's your prerogative.

[BobF64]

One thing I didnt see mentioned, is the copying being done using SMB (windows file sharing) and is the HTPC running Vista?

If you want to rapidly transfer something, use FTP, its got far fewer overheads compared to SMB.

[Shooty*]

AH, yes, I meant to mention the other OS.
Yes, it's Vista.
I'll have a pop at FTP. I normally use Terrapin but I suppose I could go through IE with an FTP address straight to the static LAN IP of the Server.

Or I could check out WHS's FTP, I suppose...

[BobF64]

Vistas SMB is "updated" and does a lot of completely unnecessary "****" that slows the whole thing down, despite Microsoft having said theyve optimized and improved it.

I have the same problems copying things from my Vista PC to my Synology NAS box, I just dont bother via SMB, I always use FTP, it goes a lot faster.