gigabit ethernet network test

[braverooster]

is there software that can test and pinpoint my slowest hardware within my network? i ask this because my transfer speeds are very varied and slower than i woulod expect from a gigabit ethernet. i have gigabit routers but my internet router is not. however internet speed or transfers is not my concern i am wondering about transfers from wd cloud drives to usb 3 drives and my computer seems to be the slowest as cloud to cloud usb to usb works fine and sppeds are up to 60MBs but when transfering from computer through gigabit ethernet to my cloud drives speeds are often less than 20MBs and sometimes as slow as 9MBs. i did a simple test moving a 4gb file from computer to cloud drive got around 10MBs then moved the same file from cloud to cloud through a gigabit netgear router and got in excess of 60MBs. everything is plugged into the gigabit netgear router first even the internet modem/router goes there then to computer etc..

 

[braverooster]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from braverooster : "gigabit ethernet network test"

is there software that can test and pinpoint my slowest hardware within my network? i ask this because my transfer speeds are very varied and slower than i woulod expect from a gigabit ethernet. i have gigabit routers but my internet router is not. however internet speed or transfers is not my concern i am wondering about transfers from wd cloud drives to usb 3 drives and my computer seems to be the slowest as cloud to cloud usb to usb works fine and sppeds are up to 60MBs but when transfering from computer through gigabit ethernet to my cloud drives speeds are often less than 20MBs and sometimes as slow as 9MBs. i did a simple test moving a 4gb file from computer to cloud drive got around 10MBs then moved the same file from cloud to cloud through a gigabit netgear router and got in excess of 60MBs. everything is plugged into the gigabit netgear router first even the internet modem/router goes there then to computer etc..

 

[bill001g]

It is not likely the network. The lan ports in your router are acting as a small switch. The traffic does not even pass though the main processor of the router. There is a small switch chip in the router and this chip can run all ports at 1g up and 1g down all at the same time. This means these ports will never slow traffic down. Your delays must be in the disk systems. This is hard to say because you have all kinds of variable related to disk drive and flash memory speeds.

The best test for network is the old IPERF tool between 2 machines. It test is fairly simplistic so it is not affected by disk speed or memory and only slightly by cpu. You most times will get speeds over 100MB on a gig network.

Not sure what to suggest this is more of a storage question I suspect than a true network issue

 

[braverooster]

It is not likely the network. The lan ports in your router are acting as a small switch. The traffic does not even pass though the main processor of the router. There is a small switch chip in the router and this chip can run all ports at 1g up and 1g down all at the same time. This means these ports will never slow traffic down. Your delays must be in the disk systems. This is hard to say because you have all kinds of variable related to disk drive and flash memory speeds.

The best test for network is the old IPERF tool between 2 machines. It test is fairly simplistic so it is not affected by disk speed or memory and only slightly by cpu. You most times will get speeds over 100MB on a gig network.

Not sure what to suggest this is more of a storage question I suspect than a true network issue

ok, firstly thank you for your prompt reply, and yes its a storage issue but in a sense i am confused slightly at the varied speeds i get within my own home network. they are fast or slow but mainly slower most of the time and only fast occasionaly which puzzels me a bit.
anyway is iPerf 3.1.3 (8 jun 2016 - 1.3 MiB for Windows Vista 64bits to Windows 10 64bits) what you suggest?, i thinkso, and i've downloaded it. i have two laptops but use 1 all the time the other hardly ever but its "in the win 10 network". are you suggesting i run a test between both computers? or is there a test to be done on the one computer i actually use?

 

[bill001g]

It will run on just about any OS. It is mostly a issue of just getting the proper executable. It is a very small file and requires no installation.

You should be able to run it on the machine you use the most. You would test to one of your laptops I suppose.

There is no easy test to run on just a single computer because you then get into the huge mess of drivers for USB and drivers for disk drives and file system structures and on and on and on. What you many times see is you can get iperf to tell you that your get 110MB between 2 machines and then you do file copies between exactly the same machines and you get a tiny fraction of that. All this means is there is some bottleneck somewhere but it is not a network issue. This is like asking why certain SSD transfer at different rates. If you have see the article this is massively complex.

 

[braverooster]

OK THANKS I WILL TRY IT LATER ON 2 LAPTOPS.

 

[braverooster]

It will run on just about any OS. It is mostly a issue of just getting the proper executable. It is a very small file and requires no installation.

You should be able to run it on the machine you use the most. You would test to one of your laptops I suppose.

There is no easy test to run on just a single computer because you then get into the huge mess of drivers for USB and drivers for disk drives and file system structures and on and on and on. What you many times see is you can get iperf to tell you that your get 110MB between 2 machines and then you do file copies between exactly the same machines and you get a tiny fraction of that. All this means is there is some bottleneck somewhere but it is not a network issue. This is like asking why certain SSD transfer at different rates. If you have see the article this is massively complex.

OK THANKS I WILL TRY IT LATER ON 2 LAPTOPS. BUT WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THIS " If you have see the article this is massively complex. "

 

[bill001g]

This site has article all the time comparing the performance of disk storage media and systems. There are massive number of charts showing difference based on the pattern of writes and reads and file size etc etc. It is not some simplistic thing where a drive always transfers at one fixed rate.

 

[braverooster]

This site has article all the time comparing the performance of disk storage media and systems. There are massive number of charts showing difference based on the pattern of writes and reads and file size etc etc. It is not some simplistic thing where a drive always transfers at one fixed rate.

ok i get get it, i thought you refered to "one article somewhere", thanks you have helped me a lot i will run the test and just confirm my network is ok and settle for the that. thanks

 

[nigelivey]

You might also want to check the settings for the drive, If you look at the Properties, Policies, and check "Enable write caching on the device". Make sure this is done on all drives.