Highest MB/s transfer rate on a home LAN?

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Trance183

Trance183

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Edit: For you new guys to this topic, please post your highest MB/s transfer rate between 2 PCs on ur home LAN or Network. Thanks

Hey guys. Please HELP! So I wanted to upgrade my home network to transfer files between 4 PCs all in differnet rooms. My family shares files all the time like videos, mp3s, huge WAV files for editing, games, photos. and for example i gave my brother my whole music folder which was 10GB. Well it took over 30 mins or so to transfer everything, while rates varied between 5-10MB/s. My PC is the base sation and I use 3 Cat5e 100ft cords, over a 100Mbit LAN Router, to go to the other 3 rooms. I plan to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet but does anyone know if i could get something even way faster than that? Can everyone POST their highest transfer rate between 2 PCs in their home network. And if its really high and you're proud of it, please share with us how you did and what you are using. Be simple and specific. Thanks alot for any input!

Note: I am not complaining about a faulty network cause everything works fine, but i'm limited to 100Mbits and i want something faster.
 
A 100mbps lan connection will have a max of 12.5 Meg/sec transfer rate. But depending on you router you may have less. A gig lan max is 125Meg/sec, but depending on you HD you will get less. Most 7200 rpm drive are around 50-60 meg/sec. If you have 5400rpm drive its around 25-30.
 
lol. i was afraid someone would do what you just did dude. its my fault for having a Title like the one i have. everything you just posted i know but i wanted to know how fast people have gone. and what they did to get that speed. also what hardware. if u have gone faster than me. let me know.
 
OK,

With my OLD Old did I say OLD SMC7008ABR max was 4 Meg/sec to my FreeNAS Box. Replaced the Router with a Netgear FVS328 and it jumped to 8.5 Meg/sec. All drag and drop test using a 680 meg iso file. Have a Netgear FVS338 on the way should max out around 12 meg/sec. And 1.8 meg/sec over my 11g AP (Laptop) to FreeNAS.
 
outstanding!!! thanks. but i'm a lil faster, lol. no offense. but i'm looking for a super fast solution cause my bros and I are multimedia freaks and we always exchange all sorts of files. we are musicians, DJs, we make videos, download movies, we make multi-GIG WAV remixes for our parties, multi-GIG tracks for our band, play LAN games all the time, share our work documents from our company, we even mess with 3D animations from time to time. We are talking GIGs galore here, lol. Recently one of my bros mentioned he wanted my whole My Documents folder so that he doesn't have to borrow my computer. Thats about 100GB alone! He said whenever I get a change there was no rush. So hopefully people can see what I want and can suggest something. I did hear about something called 10-Gig Ethernet that came out recently. But any ideas?
 
The peak transfer rates I've seen on my network are around 45Mbps.
My desktop comp has 3 10krpm raptors in a raid0, 3gb of ram, and a marvell pcie gigabit network card. My file server has a 4 disk raid5 on a 64bit 3ware controller (which is in a 64bit slot), 1.7gb of ram, and a 64bit 3com gigabit server nic. My switch is a Netgear GS116 16port gigabit switch. I am currently not using jumbo frames.
I could probably go higher but the raid controller in my server is gettin a little old. It is a 3ware 7410 which is only a 33mhz 64bit card.
 
You could take one of the drives from one computer, install it in the other, and measure file transfer speed among the drives. This will be the upper limit for networking speed. If you get 30 MB/s transfer speed, which would be typical, then it'd be a waste to spend more on high-end networking hardware. Cheap gigabit would serve you just as well.

Of course you can get into high end RAID arrays / etc., alternatively, and these will get you better performance, but you're still going to have a hard time saturating gigabit.
 
hmm. well i used to just drag and drop files from one computer to the next using the usual WinXP Home networking. but that wasn't stable at all. not sure why. but i got tired of it and just downloaded AOL Instant Messenger and it lets me send files or folders to anybody I please. so when i want to send a file to one of my bros, i just have him log onto AIM and i'll send him what he wants. but u could try a FTP Client or some Network Management program. i found a few for free from Download.com but never used any of them. i hear they are great too. other than that. not sure. 🙁
 
You should use very large files to measure maximum sustained transfer rates and hopefully avoid file caching effects (by using files much larger than your available RAM). In Windows, I use xcopy in a command prompt. You might combine that with a downloadable stopwatch. E.g. http://www.jfitz.com/dos/index.html

I think a DVD ISO or set of files for a DVD would be a good file size.

Transfer Rate = Size / Total Time

Some sample transfer times for 4.5 GB size:

At 10 MB/s: 7m 30s
At 20 MB/s: 3m 45s
At 30 MB/s: 2m 30s
At 40 MB/s: 1m 53s
At 50 MB/s: 1m 30s
At 60 MB/s: 1m 15s
At 70 MB/s: 1m 4s
At 80 MB/s: 0m 56s
At 90 MB/s: 0m 50s
At 100 MB/s: 0m 45s

You can observe the transfer rate using various tools including PerfMon and Task Manager Networking in XP, but it's best to use an overall figure instead of a momentary figure -- they vary a lot.

Note that transfer rates can be directional read vs. write, and pull vs. push. Push tends to be faster IME. Meaning if you're copying from machine A to machine B, it tends to be faster if you're logged on and doing the operation from machine A.
 
dude are those transfer times Real World situations? i calculated each one and they are perfect, in real world situations those times would be mixed and match. but i do see it says (sample transfer times) so i'm guessing they are not. what i want is your average sustained MB/s transfer rate from 1 computer in your home network, to another computer using a huge file. i don't think you did 100MB/s using a router, switch, or hub. help me out here???
 
The peak transfer rates I've seen on my network are around 45Mbps.
My desktop comp has 3 10krpm raptors in a raid0, 3gb of ram, and a marvell pcie gigabit network card. My file server has a 4 disk raid5 on a 64bit 3ware controller (which is in a 64bit slot), 1.7gb of ram, and a 64bit 3com gigabit server nic. My switch is a Netgear GS116 16port gigabit switch. I am currently not using jumbo frames.
I could probably go higher but the raid controller in my server is gettin a little old. It is a 3ware 7410 which is only a 33mhz 64bit card.
Click to expand...

Whoa dude thats nice. So do you think people have gone faster than you? lol. yes i'm a speed demon. but your rate is super and the best i've heard of. also do you know if a PCI-Express ethernet solutions are actually faster than regular PCI solutions?
 
Uh, no, I don't get every transfer rate from 10 MB/s to 100 MB/s by 10 -- that's a table I calculated to show how long it would take to transfer a 4.5 GB file at various transfer rates.
 
do you know if a PCI-Express ethernet solutions are actually faster than regular PCI solutions?
Click to expand...

PCIe can be a bit faster than PCI, but this usually doesn't matter, because you're typically limited by the file transfer performance of your hard drives.

I've benchmarked over 80-90 MB/s RAW NETWORKING bandwidth over PCI network adapters. Caps to emphasize that this wasn't file transfer performance.

If you have an add-on drive / RAID controller on the PCI bus together with a network card, or even a built-in network that goes through the PCI bus as it often does, then you're in a situation where the two parts might be stealing bandwidth from each other, limiting your overall throughput. But I haven't tested this out to see the magnitude of impact. I'd try to avoid this situation by design.
 
Lot of people have gone faster... Me no, but I do regulary transfer 3-15 Gb files at work over 100 mbit ethernet, Patience is a virture.

2003 internet speed record

2005 internet speed record

100+ Gigabit, sorry its a few years old

Just a quick search most are dated; want more, find your own...

Mind you these are not LAN speeds, they are WAN speeds.

10 Gigabit ethernet is available, It will cost you a pretty penny.
Want to play, you have to pay... :twisted:

Better have an open PCI-X or PCI-E 4x slot open, and a fast drive array, or maybe a large ram disk.

Have fun.
 
Mind you these are not LAN speeds, they are WAN speeds.

10 Gigabit ethernet is available, It will cost you a pretty penny.
Want to play, you have to pay... :twisted:
Click to expand...

This thread is supposed to be about home LAN's, and about file transfers, not WAN transfers to RAM. Show us your home LAN setup that can exceed gigabit, and don't bother if you have hired help maintaining your home LAN.
 
The original question was:
I plan to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet but does anyone know if i could get something even way faster than that?
Click to expand...

The 10 Gbit adapters I linked are not WAN adapters, RAM transfers for Internet2 speed records, maybe. This would be one option for something 'way' faster than gigabit. Who knows, some people spend $5k on a gaming box, If this guy wants to spend it on networking hardware and drive arrays to feed it, let him. Anybody have more suggestions, how about Gigabit teaming or something?

A 3 to 5 years ago most would have said Gigabit was not for home networking. I don't know where RAID cards necessary fit into home networking.

I don't have someone maintaining my network. My speed would be lousy, my laptop drive would be the bottleneck. My setup is very humble:

Cable modem-->COTS router-->
--> Dual boot 2K/Linux box (P3-500)
--> Infrant ReadyNAS
--> OKI color Laser Printer
--> LAN of a Wireless router (i.e. as an access point) --> Pair of Laptops

I have gotten line speed out of my 100 mbit network.

In days gone by, the rule of thumb was 1 mhz of CPU / mbit of networking. This was to prevent the CPU from being the bottleneck.
 
I'd also like to see more results, better or worse. Particularly telim's for teamed network benchmarks without considering drive performance.

Here are some of my recent ones in the meanwhile:

Using a single 8.4 GB file (8,425,053,778 Bytes):

3x Raid 0 ---gigabit---> 4x Raid 0: t=108s => 78.0 MB/s
4x Raid 0 ---gigabit---> 3x Raid 0: t=112s => 75.2 MB/s

4x Raid 0 ---gigabit---> 5x Raid 5: t=131s => 64.3 MB/s
5x Raid 5 ---gigabit---> 4x Raid 0: t=118s => 71.4 MB/s

5x Raid 5 ---gigabit---> 3x Raid 0: t=109s => 77.3 MB/s
3x Raid 0 ---gigabit---> 5x Raid 5: t=137s => 61.5 MB/s

These were 3 separate machines, the 4x Raid 0 and 5x Raid 5 are almost full (and the test file is new). The 3x Raid 0 is about 1/2 full.

There is variability in results; better ones were selected above. Push is also faster than pull, so I reported the pushes. I should really report the pulls, and report in terms of read vs write, but bigger numbers are more fun for now.

Please don't try to read too much into the figures -- regard them as simply demonstrative. It'd be incorrect for example to conclude that the 3x Raid 0 is faster for writing that 4x Raid 0 - this result could be due to the fact that the 4x Raid 0 is much more full than the 3x Raid 0.

They are, however, real numbers, measured and calculated accurately as far as I know.

The worst result in these tests was a pull that took 163s => 51.7 MB/s. I didn't test all the variations of pulls.

Both Raid 0 are nVidia RAID. Raid 5 is Broadcom. Drives are similar, 300 GB SATA.

All of the above were with Windows using built-in gigabit networking (2 nVidia, 1 Broadcom) going through a desktop gigabit switch without jumbo frames enabled. Max RAM on any machine was 2 GB.
 
Dear Mr. Madwand!, I am officially in love with you, lol. Thanks dude, I really appreciate this info. I was so dumbstruck to not realize that the PC, which i'm gonna be sending data to, must have a good Hard Drive setup too right? Cause I know I need a good Hard Drive setup so that the network won't bottle neck, but in return, the other side must have a fast setup too? From the looks of it, I see that is correct. Well here is how I see it. In order to instantly improve my transfer rates this is my plan.
1. Buy a Gb Ethernet Router or Switch. Probably 1 of the D-Link DGL's.
2. Buy a Raptor for fast Read/Write. Maybe get another later for Raid.
3. Tell all my bros to buy a Raptor or 2 for less bottlenecks.
4. Make sure all PC's have Gb Ethernet Ports.
5. Ask you guys for any suggestions. :) If any. Including buying advice.
 
Thanks for the links dude. Those articles were amazing 8O . Where have I been the past few years? anyway, I would never understand how those 10Gb Ethernet Cards are 10x as much as buying 10x1Gb cards, but yeah that was interesting. What I'm hoping to achieve is a speed thats fair, and not draging and hair pulling as the one I have now. How would you feel if you had to wait almost an Hour for a measley 10GB file transfer to finish before you could continue to do anything else. Yes, both systems were slow during the transfer. Will be upgrading soon along with new Network.
 
You need good HD setups on both ends to get the best file copy performance, and also for some local processing, but it's not so important to have RAID arrays everywhere if you're basically reading files from within a program that fit in available RAM and not saving them locally.

Photoshop for example might like nice scratch / cache / swap disks, but if you're viewing big files across the network, and not editing them much, then your local HD performance won't make much of a difference.

Also, I've find that one fast HD setup in either side can help your overall throughput.

So although you can gain from fast HD on both ends, the most important thing to understand is that one side is going to be the definite bottleneck -- 10 GbE ain't going to make a single IDE HD send data noticeably faster than 1 GbE (at least not when that file is not cached in RAM), and the next thing to understand is that a RAID array on one side can improve your file transfer performance, as well as provide redundancy.

Raptors are expensive. Storage Review also likes them a lot for single user performance. But with RAID, HD costs multiply, and I judged it best for myself to pick better capacity / dollar drives. (Strangely, I reported better performance than an above poster with 3x Raptor RAID 0 -- I really don't know why, and it probably doesn't matter, a point is that there's much more here than one best drive type.)

BTW, my switch was a D-Link DGS-1008D. The DGL-4300 doesn't support jumbo frames, but I've never been able to use them anyways -- you need all NIC's to support them, and most consumer NIC's don't. The DGL-4300 gave very similar performance to the DGS-1008D when I compared the two.

I'm still looking forward to telim's reports on his favorite Linksys.

Good luck with your performance improvements -- we're lucky to have so many affordable options these days, although the choices can be bewildering.
 
An hour for 10 Gb is pretty slow. Even for 100Mbit ethernet. That is 2.8 Megabytes/sec or 22.8 megabit/sec.

It is not unusual for me to have to wait 20-30 minutes to copy 5 Gb down at work. Pretty sad when the simulation runs in 90 minutes on the remote system. It's not hard for me to imagine waiting an hour. Luckly my datasets aren't usually over 5 GB.

If you could get 80% of gigabit ethernet throughput then your transfer would take ~1-1/2 minutes. Not a bad improvement from an hour. The hard drive would definitely be the bottleneck.
 
great stuff. yeah i'll just get the new Raptor 74gb with 16MB Cache. The DGL Router. Then do the same for all machines. That should drop waiting periods by half at least. thanks alot.
 
First things first:

1GbE ethernet = 128 MB/s THEORETICAL throughput (you'll never realise its full potential), this has to do with networking overhead, windows drag and drop file transfers you'll lose between 35%-40% bandwidth. Linux Samba to windows file transfers 30%-35%.

Another thing to think about the nVIdia 590 chipset can do ethernet bridging, which in effect will double your bandwidth potential, something to think about . . . havent had the chance to play with it myself, but I will soon VERY soon (mwahahaha)

Another thing to think about, is using a SATA port multiplier. Its an added cost yeah, and would require a SIL 3132 controller either on your motherboard, or have an expansion card (i would reccomend PCIE . . .). Anyhow what these devices do, is make it possible to hook 5 SATA drives into ONE SATA port, and when working together with a SIL 3132 controller, they can be run in any RAID configuration, and if your HDDs are fast enough, they will potentialy saturate a SATAII connnection.

Personally, I wouldnt waste my time, or money on raptors, 4x RAID 0, or 5x RAID 5 Seagate barracudas with command queueing would offer more storage, less cost, and perform pretty close IMO. I mean come on . . .you're not going to beable to use all that over the network anyhow, so whats the point . . . 80-90 MB/s is the MOST you'll ever see acrossed the network (if you're lucky). <--- using 1 GbE, that is.

[EDIT]

Another thing I almost forgot about, is the HDD controllers, and ethernet controllers all operate on the same bus, now in the older PCI bus systems, this would have meant you would have had a total of 120 MB/s (ish) throughput TOTAL, system wide. On a PCIE bus it works simular, but with higher bandwidth capabilities. Its something along the lines of 128MB/s per PCIE lane (asyncronous, I think), the thing is, I'm unsure how many lanes are availible for these devices, I would assume something like 3-4 lanes, atleast, but thats just a guess.
 
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