Slow Lan Copy Speed

[stumped_lan]

I have a simple home network with 2 computers - A is Win XP PRO SP3 and B is Win98SE.

DSL Modem Gateway (includes router) is Westell 327W. Both NICs are set to 100Mbps full duplex. My current setup is:

Gateway->A
Gateway->B

When I use the Win98 machine to transfer files (either from A to B or from B to A) I get transfer rates of ~65-70Mbps. But, when I use the XP machine to initiate the transfers I get rates of ~13-17Mbps.

I used WSTTCP to check my network connections and speed - I got around 90Mbps with the speed virtually identical whether I transferred from XP to Win98 or Win98 to XP.

So this seems to me to point to some kind of problem with my settings in XP. But, I haven't a clue what to try next.

stumped_lan

PS - By the way, the only antivirus I use is Kaspersky and I turned that off and disconnected my DSL from the internet but my speeds didn't change. I also tried the same transfers running XP in SAFE MODE and got approximately the same speeds (just a tiny but faster).

 

[tigsounds]

Turn off or remove QoS service in Network properties. (uncheck to turn off)
Check transfer protocols. Use NetBEUI on both machines. Yes, I know XP didn't come with it, but you can add it. Your Win98 machine already has it, or you can install it (Win98 CD needed).

Get NetBEUI for XP HERE. (56K with instructions)

Have NetBEUI installed/enabled in both machines.

Try speed again.... no guarantees here, but it won't hurt.

 

[stumped_lan]

Thanks Tigsounds but no joy.

I unchecked "QoS Packet Scheduler" under Properties for my network connection. That made at most about a 3-4% difference but frankly after running "LAN Speed Test" a bunch of times with QoS unchecked and checked the conclusion wasn't obvious. Sometimes the speeds were faster with QoS checked so overall I would say there was no significant difference.

I then enabled NetBEUI on the XP machine (it was already enabled on the Win 98 machine). There was no difference when acting from the XP machine but it did seem that there was a minor improvement (maybe a couple of percent) when acting from the Win98 machine. But, since acting from the Win98 machine was already 500-600% faster than acting from the XP machine that improvement was hardly noticeable and wasn't what I was looking for.

Using "LAN Speed Test" I got the following speeds:

From XP machine: ~9-10Mbps writing and ~23-25Mbps reading
From Win98 machine: ~50-70Mbps writing and ~190-310Mbps reading

That confirms my earlier findings - the speed of transfers initiated from the Win98 machine are 5-7 times faster than those initiated from the XP machine, regardless of which direction the transfers are made. [Task manager under XP showed the reading and writing from the Win98 only differed by a few percent so I don't know why LAN Speed Test showed such a big difference.]

Anyone else have a thought??

PS - I installed NetBEUI for XP from my XP installation disk (slipstreamed to SP3) instead of the link you gave but I imagine the files would be the same.

 

[tigsounds]

Do you trust that network monitor?

It may be right, but try another one just to be sure.

I have Netpeeker and it's been really good to me. I especially like how fast I can dump (block) all traffic. It comes in handy when an application is going to install something I didn't ask for.

This this can be used for free for 30days, then the Whois lookup quits if you don't pay.

Get it HERE

 

[stumped_lan]

OK

So I downloaded and installed NetPeeker. What am I looking for? Presumably I can get more information then XP Task Manager and LAN Speed Test are giving me (they are consistent with what they show: ~10Mbps with transfers initiated from the XP machine and ~60-70Mbps with transfers initiated from the Win98 machine).

 

[tigsounds]

You're looking at the network traffic speed by application. Computer to computer may show as System. Firefox, IE, or other will show what it's doing. The name of the executable is on the list.

There is a button on the right of the display window that toggles between a graphical display and a digital. Any network traffic in/out of your machine is presented in the window, it's speed and total bytes sent/received.

 

[stumped_lan]

Thanks - I wasn't sure what to look for!

Transfers initiated from the XP machine showed at 1.4MBps x 8 = 11.2Mbps.
Transfers initiated from the Win98 machine showed 7.0MBps x 8 = 56Mbps.

So, that confirms what the other two programs showed.

Now, if I just had some idea why the speed differs based on which computer initiated the transfer! In my research using Google before I posted here I came across posting elsewhere about the same issue with ME and XP but no one ever had an answer that I found.

I can always work around the problem by walking into the other room and using the Win98 machine to do the transfer but that must be a better answer than that out there.

 

[tigsounds]

Look at the duplex settings on both machines. Full auto-negotiate seems to work best, but maybe something else will do better for you.

Start>Settings>Control Panel>Network Connections

Right-Click your LAN card, select Properties.

Under the General tab, select "Configure" then "Advanced" for your card.

"Speed and Duplex" set to Auto-Sense.

Different cards have many different settings. It's impossible to determine what will be best in your network. I do hope your cables are not too short. The speed of light is fast, sometimes not fast enough, but network cards use some rather sensitive timing and a short cable can cause problems. Over 1M (or about 3-1/3') long is about the minimum.

There are software attempts at solutions out there such as winsockfix you can also try.

 

[stumped_lan]

In all my testing I somehow messed up the Win98 machine and now it cannot see the network. I can copy to it and view its directories from the XP machine but the Win98 machine itself does not know the LAN exists.

I'll have to troubleshoot that tomorrow first before I can try anything else.

By the way, I previously tried 100 half and 100 full on both machines and found little difference so set both to 100 full on the theory that should be the theoretically faster of the two. I think I tried Auto years ago but I haven't in the last few days of fooling around.

 

[dEAne]

Try to interchange the utp cable of win98SE with winxpsp3, if win98SE slows down then it is the cable.

 

[stumped_lan]

Try to interchange the utp cable of win98SE with winxpsp3, if win98SE slows down then it is the cable.

I'd have to move computers from room to room to try this and I cannot imagine any reason why it would make a difference - remember the problem is my speeds differ depending upon which computer is used to initiate the transfer, not on which direction the transfer is going.

 

[stumped_lan]

RESOLVED - kind of !

Unfortunately, no one had any useful suggestions. So, I decided to bite the bullet and install XP on the Win98 machine (I had a spare hard drive and spare XP license). The result was:

Transfer speeds are now almost the same regardless of which machine initiates the transfer - existing XP has the faster processor and transfers initiated from that machine are a couple of Mbps faster. That is exactly what one would expect and makes sense. On existing-XP I have one fast SATA drive and several older EIDE drives. It makes no difference whether I write to or read from the faster drive so the limiting factor is not related to hard drive speed (HD Tach shows the SATA drive is significantly faster at transferring data within the machine).

By the way, transfers from existing-XP to new-XP and from new-XP to existing increased from ~60Mbps to ~80Mbps. So, that was a 33% increase in speed for transfers initiated from the Win98 (now new-XP) machine. And, it was a more than 600% increase in speed for transfers initiated from the existing-XP machine (from ~11Mbps to ~82-83Mbps)!

For the record, using WSTTCP under a DOS command I get transfer speeds of 95Mbps+. That uses RAM only so is independent of hard drive read/write and access speeds. When using Windows Explorer I get ~82-83Mbps. I conclude that system overhead associated with the hard drives (and either Windows Explorer or the Windows operating system) cuts my throughput by about 15 Mbps. That is somewhat consistent with reports I read during my internet searches while troubleshooting - if you can get 80-85% of the theoretical 100Mbps then that is considered pretty decent.

I ran across one document at Microsoft that claimed Windows Explorer under XP operated slightly differently from Windows Explorer under earlier operating systems (specifically, ME but presumably Win98 as well). I suspect that may have been the source of my problem but I was not able to figure out how to utilize the information to solve my problem.