Hello!

I am having trouble with my home network. I am hoping somebody could give me advice about where to trouble shoot..

Okay, I have a XP box that connects to a cable modem. I installed a second ethernet card on the XP box to connect to my linux box directly by crossover cable. When I copy file from XP to the linux box, it's very fast. (I am not sure how fast exactly is, but window task bar icon has tool tip that says, 400Mbps on the tooltip !?)

However, when I try to transfer file from the linux box to the windows box, I get the speed of around 8kb/sec... When I do ethtool on the linux box, I get following status.

Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Current message level: 0x00000001 (1)
Link detected: yes

I don't know how to get similar status on windows box, but I am wondering if this issue has anything to do with the window site of the ethernet card to not have configured with full-duplex mode.

Can somebody give me any hint?

Thanks!

In WinXP you can find that information by right-clicking on My Network Places, select Properties, then find your Local Area Network connection that has your network card listed next to it. Right-click on that and select properties. Select the Blah Blah Network Adaptor (it will be the name of your network card) and hit Properties. There should be a tab called bindings or something like that. It has a bunch of variables on the list to the left. If you click on one, it will show you the value on the right and allow you to change it.

What are you using to transfer files, though? If it's Samba, there have been a lot of reports of Samba being slow transferring files one way but not the other. Try searching the forums.

By the way, it's impossible to transfer at 400Mb/s with 100BaseT Ethernet. It probably said 40Mb/s, not 400 (or else it was 400Kb/s).

Thanks for your reply.

I tried to browse the network card setting on XP for the ethernet card, but I couldn't find anywhere with information that you pointed out. I think it's somehow made invisible because the card is setup as part of XP network bridge and XP controls it, or something.

For the 400Mbps speed, No, I see exactly "Network Bridge Speed: 400.0 Mbps" on the task bar. It is "M"bps not K. I don't know what this means, but actual speed that I get for XP to linux is around 80Mbps which sounds about right. The connection speed from linux to XP is again, still super slow of around 10-8Kbps..

If duplex is the issue, will is cause the symptom like I am having? I think it will make both up/down stream slow.

Oh, that's because you have two network cards bridged in WinXP, so the 400Mb/s speed is between the two cards in the same box.

You still didn't answer my question, what are you using to transfer files? It could have a lot to do with the problem. Are you using Windows shares (SMB/CIFS), FTP, SCP, rsync, NFS, what???

I tested with a FTP server on XP box first for both up/down. The speed was as I stated in the previous message. Then I tested on FTP server on Linux box. The connection was speed was the same but in this case up/down revered of course.

So it seems, no matter what protocol I use, the network speed from Linux to XP is extremely slow. I don't know how to test with UDP or any other network protocol.

Thanks!