Network faster up than down. What what what?

[Shooty*]

Guys,
Just moved house. Previously had HTPC linked to server through home plugs, got 6MB/Sec over that connection.

In new house, have connected them directly with one cat 5e cable. static IPs on the two machines, they see each other, they talk, it's all good.

Except it's not.

The server has HDDs in it. The HTPC has an SDD.

If I transfer files FROM server TO HTPC, I reach 6 - 8 MB/Sec

If I transfer files FROM HTPC TO server, it hits 60 MB/Sec, sustained.

that's not right, surely? What on earth can be causing that? Any hints gratefully accepted. Both machines are using the onboard LAN, and both are Asus mobos, I think (M2n68 am plus in the server, similar in the HTPC).

It's affecting my DVD and HD MP4 playback in Mediabrowser, which is a pain. Menu navigation in DVD rips is non-existent with massive delays.

[badass]

Guys,
Just moved house. Previously had HTPC linked to server through home plugs, got 6MB/Sec over that connection.

In new house, have connected them directly with one cat 5e cable. static IPs on the two machines, they see each other, they talk, it's all good.

Except it's not.

The server has HDDs in it. The HTPC has an SDD.

If I transfer files FROM server TO HTPC, I reach 6 - 8 MB/Sec

If I transfer files FROM HTPC TO server, it hits 60 MB/Sec, sustained.

that's not right, surely? What on earth can be causing that? Any hints gratefully accepted. Both machines are using the onboard LAN, and both are Asus mobos, I think (M2n68 am plus in the server, similar in the HTPC).

It's affecting my DVD and HD MP4 playback in Mediabrowser, which is a pain. Menu navigation in DVD rips is non-existent with massive delays.

First, check your Antivirus. Try temporarily disabling it to see if it has an effect.
Also, try playing with the autonegotiation and duplex settings. Set them both to 100/full or 1000/full and see what happens.

What are you transferring to? The SSD? Try to eliminate that by adding an HDD to the machine and copying to that. If the HDD works fine, try updating your controller drivers and the motherboard chipset drivers.

[Shooty*]

First, check your Antivirus. Try temporarily disabling it to see if it has an effect.
Also, try playing with the autonegotiation and duplex settings. Set them both to 100/full or 1000/full and see what happens.

What are you transferring to? The SSD? Try to eliminate that by adding an HDD to the machine and copying to that. If the HDD works fine, try updating your controller drivers and the motherboard chipset drivers.

No antivirus on the server. nod32 on the htpc, which has not cuased probs before, nd has small foot, but will give it a go.

Server network adapter oes not have 1000/full as an option. connects fine at 1gbps, but does not offer it as a choice. I put them both on 100 a minute ago, and it killed the speed.

[arthurleung]

Try disable any wireless adapter (if any), disable firewall, and update your network card driver.
Which SSD do you have? Some of the first gen SSD have terrible write performance.

And Windows XP's (if you're using that) network stack can behave oddly when the device latency is high. (e.g. Network to USB HDD, and SSD lag can mimic that)

[Shooty*]

I have an issue with the network card driver. Nearly everysingle time I run Vista, it gives me the windows update icon in the system tray and tries to upgrade the LAN adapter. Broadcomm, or something. Nearly every time. That might be the issue, I suppose....

No wifi. SSD is a Kingston 40gb, which I've got good speed from on drect usb drive transfer

[daniel_owen_uk]

Firstly sort your B's out.

60MB/s is 60x8 = 480Mbps which is above 100Mbps, so unless you are connecting at gigabit speeds (which it sounds as if you aren't) then that's simply not true and must be an error in reading the speed.

What are you measuring with?

6MB/s is plenty for mp4 HD or even streaming bluray. 6Mb/s on the other hand would be a no go.

[Shooty*]

I measured by transferring 100 6 meg cbr files from one machine to the other, and then back again.

From Server to HTPC, it took 100 seconds (1 x 6meg file a second)
From HTPC to server, it took 10 seconds (10 x 6meg files a second)

Hence the speeds I gave of 60 MB (which I believe is 60 meg a second, yeah, in accordance with the above). Yes, it was connected at gigabit speeds. BOTH computers in teh system tray said "connected at 1000Mbps" or whatever. It's just that for some reason transfers one way aren't as quick as the other.

I can't get the hang of mb/ MB/ mB/ Mb. When I say "6 meg", I mean the average size of an MP3 file type thing.

[Mblaster]

I can't get the hang of mb/ MB/ mB/ Mb. When I say "6 meg", I mean the average size of an MP3 file type thing.

FYI - the different sizes are MegaByte (MB) and Megabit (Mb). Mb is generally used in network speeds, like internet connections are 8Mb/s or 24Mb/s etc, and MB is generally used for file sizes. A byte is 8 bits, so 1MB is 8Mb etc.

8MB/s is 64Mb/s, the kind of real world transfer speeds you can expect from a 100Mb/s ethernet connection. So I'd assume that for some reason one direction of the connection is being limited to 100Mb/s, afraid I have no idea why though.

[oolon]

Hmmm so HTPC has an SSD, what do we know about SSD, fast reads, slow writes. No idea what OS your computers are running however, if you can create a ram disk on both of them transfer a file from ram disk to ram disk. You can also try transfering a file from the server to a ram disk and from the ssd to a ram disk on the server, making sure you flush any cache you have first. A gigabit interface faster than most storage devices except memory. Your server will also suffer with seek times on the hard drives as well, you need to test both large and small file sizes.

[Shooty*]

Thanks Oolon.

I was toying with a ram disk. However, before that what I think I will do (bearing in mind that the link at the moment is just htpc - server with no other connections) is to put my laptop where the HTPC is, and see what speeds I achieve between the laptop and server. And then between the laptop and HTPC.

All machines except server are running Vista.

I'm surprised that the server seems to write at 40MB a second, but would be even more surprised if the SSD was THAT slow. Even thought it's a 40gb kingston v boot drive, they're meant to write faster than HDDs, I thought.

I suspect that if there is a weak link, it's the NIC on the server. I don't know why I think this, other than the problems I had actually finding a driver for it that worked with WHS. If I continue to get slow speeds from server to laptop during the above test, and consistently higher speeds between laptop and HTPC, then I shall deduct that the problem is server side, and get a proper network card,and not rely on the mobo one.

...

From experience, people, is there generally any benefit to separate NIC cards, as opposed to bundled on-mobo ones?

[jim]

Minimal... think Killer NIC.

[oolon]

An onboard nic should be fine, one question that springs to mind is how are you transfering the file don't forget things like windows sharing have a hand shake process. Ideally you need to use something nice an raw like FTP or HTTP to send the file, and certainly nothing with encryption. Have task manager open to monitor core use as well.

[oolon]

Minimal... think Killer NIC.

I thought of this when you said that

but was very disappointed to see google bring up that

[Shooty*]

I thought of this when you said that

Is that?

*peers*

No. No one would be that stupid. Surely.

[Funkstar]

Is that?

*peers*

No. No one would be that stupid. Surely.

Takes Power Over Ethernet to a whole other level.

[scaryjim]

No. No one would be that stupid. Surely.

Welcome to America, have a nice day

p.s. to be on topic, it sounds like (as MBlaster suggested) the server's broadcom onboard ethernet isn't running @ 1Gb full duplex, but limiting the "upstream" connection to 100Mb. If you've had difficulty finding an appropriate driver for the NIC that might be part of the problem. What's the server motherboard?