Tuning Up The Network

[GlenR]

My VMC is connected to my WHS via a Netgear GS605 gigabit switch. Both the Vista box and WHS report that they are connected at 1Gbps. All good.

When I set these up I just used the default network and performance settings and now I feel the need to tweak, so i want to make sure that I have the server/network running at optimum. Best transfer rates possible and all that.

Anyway, while I understand the basics of TCP/IP, I'm no guru and don't want to go in ham fisted changing things. I don't even know what transfer rate I currently have, or how to measure it.

Can anyone point me to some good tutorials to help me tweak the LAN and/or server? I ahve Googled, but you get a milion pages, and not all of them inspire confidence. So, any tips, guidance or directions to good info by some of the network gurus would be appreciated. This is as much a learning exercise for me as it is a tweaking exercise.

[arkay]

A little light reading and an app that helps you get what you're after?

Most of these things reference internet connection speed but they work just as well for LAN's. Just with different settings. Play with it and you should be able to get everything tweaked nicely.

Here's some interesting info on Vista and it's auto TCP window tuning feature... Turning it off could speed things up!

Cheers,

Arkay.

[vlad]

What is the reason for you need to tune up the network?
Slow thumbnails ?

Pity that WHS does not provide iSCSI target. That would fix your problems.
Vista has initiator built-in.

It is funny to see some serious equipment like EMC Clariion, connected to W2K3 server via fiber mapped drive performance from client and compare to iSCSI LUN targeted on the same Clariion, over the same network.
Initiated from Vista client you can actually saturate gigabit network if you are not using QoS.

[vlad]

I would like to expand on my last post .
Ethernet is a crap technology, and always will be. Fiber arbitrated loop is so much superior, I don't even want to start. It is close to Token Ring, if anyone remembers. It works the best when it is loaded to 100%. Collision detection is a weak and cheap technology going forward only because of IBM inbred stupidity - charging people too much for licensing of Token Ring. Ethernet is working good when you have light load and rapidly deteriorate with bigger load.
So when you use an awesome SCSI protocol on the top of crappy Ethernet - it does not hold.
Gigabit Ethernet is not as good as 100MB/s Token Ring any day.

Token Ring and Fibre arbitrated loop give a token to the device in a sequence, Ethernet is a managed chaos.

[arkay]

Heh.. We found a token ring card in one of the cabinets at work the other day.. Most people didn't know what it was! Wonder if you can still get new ones...

Cheers,

Arkay.

[vlad]

Originally Posted by arkay

Heh.. We found a token ring card in one of the cabinets at work the other day.. Most people didn't know what it was! Wonder if you can still get new ones...

Cheers,

Arkay.

As I say IBM ignorance. Same will happen to Linux. Someone will find an iso in 10 years

[GlenR]

Originally Posted by vlad

What is the reason for you need to tune up the network?
Slow thumbnails ?

To a small degree. I don't have that much problem with thumbnails - it's not perfect and could be better - but I can live with it. Obviously if I can speed it up, all the better.

This is just as much about me learning a bit more on the networking side as it is about anything else. Vista has been stable and VMC just chugging along, so I want to fiddle somewhere and tuning the server/network is next.

Originally Posted by vlad

Ethernet is a managed chaos.

Which is why TCP/IP works so well for the internet which is, itself, managed chaos.

The big advantage Ethernet has over token ring is reliability. If I remember my (limited) token ring theory, one dead station can cause all sorts of problems on the ring, whereas with ethernet, it's pretty self healing with alternate routes and so on. That's why the US military developed it - if set up properly it is very hard to bring all comms down.

[arkay]

Haha. Does that mean Windows is the Ethernet of OS's. Popular but no where near the best?

Cheers,

Arkay.

P.S. OT as it is I've just been playing with streaming audio in Amarok via Internode (unmetered) and found a lovely little script that rips the stream to HDD, and names each track with the correct track name.. I've been wanting a way to find all those old tracks that I can't remember the names of so I'm going to hack it to record 10 seconds of every track played till I get a list of all the songs they have with samples to listen to. Then I can get the songs I'm missing... Sweet