[godisi]

Hey guys, im currently having real bad slowdown in my home lan.


equipment is as follows:


-1 "8 port trendnet switch"(recently changed)

-7 machines connected to switch

-all pc's have a different nic cards, as most are internal ones

-all pc's different spec, ranging from p4 3.2, down to pm 1.5ghz laptop


My problem is with the p4 1.8 machine, which i should add is the machine that connects to the internet, all others are ics connected to that one machine.


Basically the machine cannot transfer files at a decent speed, network utilisation is only at ~20-30% max, whereas the other machines can transfer amongt themselves at ~75-90% all the time. But the main concern is that while transferring files using this internet connected machine, all ics clients will have severely slow internet, to a point where it cannot be used until the transfer is over.


I have changed nic settings to auto sense line speed, as this resolved an issue i had before where i couldnt get a different machine on the lan to transfer files at a half decent rate.


Id like to point out that the problem machine has p2p software running all the time, a software firewall, and apart from that, all else is the same.

 

[bullgates]

any software trying to "call home?"

 

[godisi]

Idoubt the machine would have a virus

 

[godisi]

Idoubt the machine would have a virus

 

[tecklord]

If you are running p2p software this is the problem.

 

[kingstud]

Any traffic sent out over the network will be insignificant compared to the bandwidth that your LAN has. Most broadband connections are only a few megabits per second, while his LAN is capable of 100 megabits per second. So I doubt that P2P software is saturating your network. However, it might be saturating your CPU. Check your CPU utilization (using task manager) while you are doing a network transfer.


As for other possibilties, I would definitely replace the ethernet cable or at least swap it with one of your speedier machines. A bad cable can cause excessive retransmissions and severely degrade network throughput. Having been a systems administrator, I can tell you that most network connectivity and speed problems can be traced to a bad cable.

 

[tbdombrosky]

All of these are good suggestions. In addition I would maybe try updating the drivers for the network cards in the ics server. Some networks cards have pretty high cpu utilization so having two of them might cause a problem with high amounts of traffic on one.

 

[lordsiris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tecklord If you are running p2p software this is the problem.

I agree with tecklord, it might not only be killing the computer running the p2p software and the ICS but I have also seen ********** take out some hardware routers and modems because of the amount of traffic. I used to have this problem but have started using a linux software firewall on a dedicated machine and have traffic shaped my traffic to set all p2p software to the lowest priority which allows normal net traffic, ie web and mail, to continue to work fine. Traffic shaping can get a little complicated so I wont try the give a tutorial here, not sure if I could anyway, but give google a shot and you will find loads of information. By the way my firewall is ipcop, another is smoothwall, or monowall.


Another thing i noticed using p2p, basically **********, is that it reads/writes alot to the hard drive which will definately slow done transfers of file between that computer and anything else just because the p2p is using all the hard drive read/writes.


If using Azureus there is a disk cache setting that can be turned on to help reduce this problem.


Hope some of this helps.


lordsiris

 

[90c4]

My entire network slows WAY down when I have ********** running on any one of the computers.

 

[kingstud]

If you have a lot of simultaneous connections like one would when using P2P, some consumer grade routers may have trouble keeping up with all the connections and routing. I hadn't though of that - it could definitely be the issue here.

 

[tecklord]

If you saturate your upload it will affect your download thus causing the slow incoming connections. Unless your are on a T1 or better which I doubt your are, if you try to adjust your upload speed to say (half) your Upload throughput you just might find your problem solved. Now like others are saying here aswell, if you have bittorent running some software programs use alot of connections at once causing a slow down in the network. This has happened to me on several occasions and I could only fix the issue with a ghost restore. I am not saying reformat your computer but just try the simplier ones first. Hope you find the problem.

 

[godisi]

ill try out these options today, hopefully it is just the cable, p2p hogs internet speed, but does not affect lan speed transfers, and cpu util. is at ~15% with application on and d/l.

 

[godisi]

btw its not internet speed that i dislike, but the fact that my lan transfers off this ics machine is very slow in comparison to the other pc's

 

[godisi]

k cpu goes to 100% during file transfer, whats this mean?, im using a p4 1.8ghz

 

[ez2logon]

Have you tried disabling your software firewall?

 

[godisi]

yep tried that, didnt help either, it made it a little faster, but not much more, also cpu is at 100% without firewall/and or p2p applications

 

[tecklord]

What is the process running at 100%? Look in the task manager and see what it is.

 

[Diver]

I had this same problem once. I went through the same hair pulling experience, trying all sorts of advice from people. In the end the problem turned out to be that my video card and my nic were sharing the same IRQ. I disabled the driver, removed the nic, unloaded the driver, moved the nic to another PCI slot, let Win XP find a driver for the new hardware installation, and my problem went away.


Not sure if that will work for you, but it did for me.

 

[godisi]

ill try that, cheers, though my board uses onboard video, so ill c wat i can do

 

[kingstud]

Since you have so many machines, try swapping a cable from a machine you know is fast with the one that is giving you performance troubles. It's easy and quick to do.


If that doesn't fix it, it sounds like your NIC is eating up too much of you CPU to transfer data at its full potential.