I have my Windows XP box and my Infrant ReadyNAS hooked up through a Gb switch. That switch is hooked up to my home router.

However, when I transfer files from my computer to the NAS or vice versa and check my network utilization statistics in the task manager, it varies between 8-11% utilization.

How can I get my windows box to up how much it utilizes for the connection? The transfers are so slow even with the Gb connection it's getting annoying.

 

Do you have all the ports set to full duplex?

 

Which ports are you referring to?

Ports on the router? switch? nic card?

I never explicity set anything to full deplex, didn't know I needed to.

The gigabit switch does not have an interface of any kind so nothing on there can be adjusted.

 

I just checked the properties of the nic card, it's line speed and duplex setting is set to Auto detect.

 

make it 100/full

 

Don't you mean 1000/Full since It's on a Gb network??

 

Alright, so there's no option for 1000/Full.

there are only these options:

 

Forgot to mention, I'm also running Cat6 cables.

 

After doing some reading on the internet, I think I might have found the culprit. I think it's my hard drive. The read times off my hard drive may not be fast enough to fill up the network pipe and that's probably my bottleneck.

What do you guys think?

 

Thats probably correct

 

I'm not a network guy yet, but studying to get my CCNA. But what you are saying sound correct. I would however, change your link speed to "AutoNegotiate 1000Mbps" instead of Auto Detect. If all your equipment is Gigabit, why not choose 1000Mbps?

 

The onboard Gigabit controller on my Intel mobo doesn't support Jumbo frames either.

 

What kind of hard drive you got in there? 1st gen SATA is rated at 1200Mbit/Sec. Even if you had a "slow" SATA disk I would expect it to do better than 10% of your 1Gb connection.

 

GB Switch means nothing. There are very few drive set ups that will actually function at those speeds. BOTH drives matter (read and write). This really isn't a network problem. ;]

STUPID assumption, but BOTH cards are gigabit right? =] Never know. LoL.

 

I have to check the exact model hard drive I have installed on my windows box and which drives are on the NAS.

The NAS does support Gb connections w/jumbo frames. My Intel Mobo supports Gb connections as well, but no support for jumbo frames.

 

There are many packet tracers you can use...

 

packet tracers???

 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...+packets&meta=

 

Try a crossover cable and connect the NAS directly to your PC. See if there is any difference in speed. That will rule out if the switch (or router) is the culprit (doubtful).

How many drives do you have in the NAS and what RAID type are you using? You will have overhead due to parity checking, not to mention network overhead...

8-11% of 1gb is still 80-110mb... Still faster than a 100mb connection (which might get 20-40mb transfer)...

Also, don't get bits mixed up with bytes...

 

I dont' think I have a crossover cable. If I find one, i'll give that a go.

I have 4 500GB Seagate barracuda drives installed. I do understand there is quite a bit of overhead for syncing the data, parity checks, etc. Hence one of the reasons why I want to upgrade the RAM in the NAS to 1GB, my NAS is an older version that only shipped with 256MB of RAM

Yea, I haven't done the math behind whether my connection is faster than the normal 100Mb connection, I just wanted to ensure I was utilizing my Gb connection as much as Possible.

I try not too, and I'm aware of the differences, sometimes I goof though. units was always my pitfall.