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.