slow Intel 82540EM Gigabit card performance
 

I am trying to work out an issue in a FC4 system (2.6.11-1.1369 kernel) with an Intel 82540EM Gigabit network card network card performing poorly.
The ethtool output shows the card speed is 1000Mb/s (as it should) but it only transfers at about 250 kb/s to a local XP workstation hardrive (All other system network devices -cards and switches are gigabit speed also. I verfied this by doing a file transfer between 2 windose XP boxes thru the same gigabit switch at between 8-10 Mb/s at least).
What could be causing this slow server file transfer performance?
[some command outputs follow:]
$/sbin/ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: umbg
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
Link detected: yes

How can I figure out which module/driver the card is using ?
I see the device using lspci and I see the suspected driver (e1000 ?) using lsmod but how can I know for sure?

$/sbin/lspci
01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)
$ /sbin/lsmod | grep e1000
e1000 103213 0


I have recompiled the e1000 driver on a second system (with the same kernel exactly) and I need to know what files I should transfer in order to load it (if I should?). I think I would be ok if I duplicate the following steps from the make install...

find /lib/modules/2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 -name e1000.ko -exec rm -f {} \; || true
find /lib/modules/2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 -name e1000.ko.gz -exec rm -f {} \; || true
install -D -m 644 e1000.ko /lib/modules/2.6.11-1.1369_FC4/kernel/drivers/net/e10 00/e1000.ko
/sbin/depmod -a || true
install -D -m 644 e1000.7.gz /usr/share/man/man7/e1000.7.gz
man -c -P'cat > /dev/null' e1000 || true

The server system has a software raid on the data drives.
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 18G 6.0G 11G 37% /
none 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/md0 147G 23G 117G 17% /safe
/dev/sda1 190G 104G 87G 55% /media/WORK_SAVER

Do I need a new gigabit nic, a new driver, or some other fix
? Thanks in advance !

Ken

edit.... just re-read your post. I read it wrong originally, even at 250KB, you're still poking along pretty slow. sorry, I don't have a good answer - your setup does look good. You're using a gigabit switch, correct?

My original post said something about jumbo frames, mtu sizes, and the difference between bits and bytes. I'll spare the details as it no longer applies. ;)

Yes, the switch is a giga switch as well. The client box to client box data transfer is roughly 40x that of the client to server speed. If I can get at least that improvement I'll be pretty happy.