NT Network speed problems

Dear sir,

I have networked 6 PCS through a switch of 100MBPS which run on Windows NT 4.0 Networking.

The PCs are networked via domain level networking and have ethernet adapters of 100 mbps and 1 has an ethernet adapter of 10 mbps.
There is a D-link 1008 (8 port) switch to control the traffic. There is 10base-T UTP cable to connect the computers.

All computers except server are celeron above 366 mhz and their RAM is > 64 MB. The server is P-III 800 Mhz and has 256 MB RAM.

The problem is that I am not getting required throughput from the computer. The actual data transfer speed between server and workstations is only 1 to 1.5 MBPS even when there is no traffic.

Is it due to the incompatibility of lancards (4 of them are 100 mbps and 1 is 10mbps) or due to fault in cable? What is the normal throughput I should get through a switch and adapters of 100 MBPS.

Should I upgrade to Windows 2000 to increase the network speed. Will installng win'2k help to increase the throughput.

Please guide me and help me in solving the problems.

Thanx.
Vaibhav Jain
[email protected]

 

How can you have 10MB devices connected to a 100BT switch? Is it really or is it autosensing 10/100? Sounds like a cabling problem to me, I would test every cable end-to-end to see if they are pinned correctly and that they are not faulty. They should be cabled to the 568B standard and not just straight throught. Take the 10BT computers off of the network and see how and if performance improves. What are you doing on the network when you are measuring the 1.5MB throughput? Try dumping a bunch of files across the network and see what you get.

 

Hey dude,

I'm assuming the switch is 10/100 ...

PLEASE don't upgrade any of them to Win2k, they're not really big enough, and it'll run like a dog... and introduce more parameters over the top of the problems you need to solve...

You say "via domain level networking" ... is the server running NT4 Server? Does it have DNS Services running? Just wondering...

Now, protocols.... What protocols are you running on all the PC's... if it's TCP/IP, set fixed IP addresses from 192.168.0.1 upwards. Don't set them to use DHCP unless you've got a DHCP Server running (doesn't sound like it to me). You could have NetBeui too, but you don't need it, and it'll just double up the network traffic by sending every packet twice (once via TCP/IP and once via NetBeui)...

Let me know how you go...

Ionz

______________________
Happiness is a round shape

 

As Rockn said, make sure that they are not straight through and are all wired for 568B.

Also, is the switch set for auto duplexing? This will help increase the throughput.

What are you using to measure the throughput?

 

One thing to check, assuming all wiring and hardware is correct, is the NIC settings. Auto-sensing on many NIC's doesn't work correctly. Be absolutely sure of the hardware that you are connecting each NIC to and set the NIC properties accordingly. In other words, if you are connecting to a 100 Mb switch, set the NIC for 100Mb, Full-Duplex. Not "Auto". I have seen many Dell NIC's detect a 100 Mb/s hub as a switch. It would try to communicate bi-directionally and kill the speed.

Brian