Speed of my home network.

[Guest]

My configuration:

 

1) One 10/100BaseT BlackBox 8 port minihub.

2) One server, one client.

3) Server: Windows 2k Server

4) Client: Windows NT4 Workstation

5) Both have one 3com pci bussmaster NICs

6) CAT 5 cabling

7) One cable going into hub from backbone connection to school ethernet (uplink port).

8) Server is online (through school backbone)

 

Ok, the hub that I have is showing collions out the wazoo. The collision light blinks every bit as much as all the other little lights on the hub. I think because of this, it is taking me hours to do a network install of office as well as other programs. What in the world can be causing these collisions... i mean, all I have is two computers on my network??? After realizing I have no answer, I asked my networking professor. We've gone back and forth several times about this and all he could conclude was that perhaps one of the cables I am using isn't any good. Well, perhaps this is so, but I really dont think this is what is wrong. Could it be the hub?

 

NE body have any suggestions??

 

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---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.---

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Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112

256MB PC100 SDRAM

Diamond Viper V770 Ultra

Sound Blaster Live! Value

Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66

Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66

Quantum 8.3 Gig

36X Acer CD Rom

Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor

3Com NIC

Lexmark 5700 Printer

http://sandoval.dynip.com

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[~Aragorn~ 0]

check the cables - he could be right

 

crossover cables used in mistake can cause this problem - try connecting each of the cables DIRECTLY between the pc's if one works then its a crossover so u need to change it for a normal one other than that borrow some other cables from uni or where ever and try them

 

Collisions will occur but only when more than one pc tries to transmit at a time

this could be caused by dodgy network cards/drivers or lots of pcs

 

Aragorn

[CUViper 0]

if they were crossover cables, the network wouldn't work at all...

[Guest]

all of my cables are straight through cables.

 

i dont know what else to say.....

 

the collision light blinks only when i begin sending files from one pc to the other. its not like its blinking constantly.

 

but when i start doing any transferring, it blinks rythmically. you say collisions are caused by two nic signalling at the same time? what else may cause collisions?

[CUViper 0]

make sure the two computers are configured the same as far as the network goes. Especially pay attention to things like full-duplex enabled/disabled. These are usually found in the advanced tab of the NIC. Also, you should check if the collision errors are showing up in the event log... if they are, post them here so we can have a look

[Guest]

ok, found the duplex settings

 

which should i chose?

i'll put it on auto detect for now

 

i looked through the event viewer and i didnt come accross anything about collisions....

[clutch 1]

OK, here's some stuff to try:

 

Go to this link, and check out these reg mods:

http://www.sprintbroadband.com/utilities/

 

Look for the one at the bottom, and get it. It will up your receive window, and reduce the amount of times that you broadcast "ok" messages. In addition, make sure that you are using just TCP/IP (more of a habit then anything else, you could have a ton of other protocols just as long as you negotiate for one of them) on both machines. Now, here are a couple of other things to think about:

 

1. The server is online through the school backbone? Well, if you are connecting to the server through the rest of the traffic on the school network, expect some activity.

 

2. Network install and major transfers are messy business. When I copy over large files on my home network of 3 boxes (NT Server, NT/Linux Dual Boot WS, and Win2K Pro) or the network at my office (about 40 PCs and 4 servers) I get collision lights too. This just happens with major transmissions for long periods of time. I have done network installs of Linux, Office, SMS 2.0, SQL 7.0, and other big programs, and you will wind up with collisions like that. It's usually no big deal. I usually check for excessive collisions by streaming files (MP3s or Real Player at High Bandwidth) to see if there are collisions, if there are, then that would be time to worry.

 

 

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[clutch 1]

Also, cheap NICs and/or poor drivers can also contribute to collision problems.

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

CLUTCH HIT IT ON THE NOSE.....my roomate bought an *gasp* APTIVA. I installed a cheap network card he bought....we get so much collisions, its rediculous. Now i had the exact same setup with another guys cpu with a 3com (same as mine) and no collisions to report.

[Guest]

but both my NICs are 3Coms

both PCI

both bussmaster

both native to both nt4 and nt5??

 

i'm using tcp/ip and netbeui on my client and server machines.

 

without netbeui i can't see anything on the network. should i use ipx/spx instead?

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

sorry Sandoval.....i shoulda read the first post for the nic brand. My fault. See i am still having this problem. My roomate is using 98, but that doesnt realate to your problem.

[clutch 1]

First, stay away from IPX/SPX. It's a broadcast-based routable protocol that is primarily used on Novell networks pre-[censored] Novell 5. It is interesting, however, that you are using NetBEUI and TCP/IP. What is the primary protocol of your school? I would imagine that it would be TCP/IP (for many reasons) and that there wouldn't be a need for NetBEUI or anything broadcast based. Here's a wacky idea, can you FTP to the server in question, and test file transfers that way? It would be interesting to see how your performance would be as this would safely isolate the ability to switch protocols to NetBEUI.

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[Guest]

Well, without tcp/ip, I can't assign IP addresses to the client pc... which I have configured to obtain ip automatically from my dhcp server (also running a proxy so that client can get online). So therefore without tcp/ip how would i browse the web?

 

Also, in my experience, I can't browse through network neighborhood or map any network drives using tcp/ip!?

 

So... netbeui alone would let me play with my little network, but i couldnt get online with client. With tcp/ip alone, i could get online with client, but i couldn't play with my little network.

 

Ugh... hey btw if any of youguys are interested, i posted a topic in applications about deploying office 2000 over my small network. I need some help there too. Thank you all. I'm setting this up for my networking class and the instructor isnt of much help because he hasn't had any experience with windows 2000 yet. (Shool is sorta cheap).

[clutch 1]

Actually, I use TCP/IP at both my home and office networks exclusively, and I can browse just fine. At both locations I have WINS servers. If you have an NT server out there, you could set it up as a WINS box as well. However, I am not familiar with your network and its interaction with the school. The reason why you can browse the machines using TCP/IP is because of NetBIOS being enable over TCP/IP. It works very well and quite fast. There should be no reason to give up TCP/IP, although you may want to can NetBEUI.

 

I think that the best thing you can do is to learn how name resolution works in Win2K/NT/9x first, then get an understanding of what protocols you should use and why. After that, slimming down your active protocol choices to one will make your hunting of any other problems much easier.

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[Guest]

I tried ftp like you suggested.... only getting about 4k/sec... obviously something wrong.

 

So you suggest that I use tcp/ip exclusively and enable netbios?

 

===gonna go try it

[clutch 1]

Cool, now you have a metric to work with. Have you tried up[censored] your drivers? NetBIOS over TCP has a few settings in Win2K;

 

Enable NetBIOS over TCP

Disable NetBIOS over TCP

Use NetBIOS setting of DHCP server

 

Now, you would tinker with these to see what would help with your browsing issues. However, the first thing that I would be concerned with is that awful speed that you have. You should have been receiving in the MB/s range and not KB/s.

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[Guest]

Ok, got netbios enabled over tcp/ip on my server.

(win2k)

 

Where is the setting in nt4 for my client?

 

btw, i'm still gettint <4k/sec on that ftp xfer. thanks for your patience and help.

[Guest]

nevermind, figured out the netbios thing...i shouldnt reply so quickly... before i try things.

[Llion 0]

Just because I had a similar situation here...

 

Be sure you have defragmented your harddrives.

And be sure you have UDMA enabled for your HDs.

 

I had a VERY bad NW performance (W2k clients and NT server) and was playing around with all possible NW settings - nothing helped - until I installed BX busmaster IDE driver (which made NW access appr. three times faster - no kidding) and defragmented my HDs on the server (which nearly doubled the NW speed again). Before that it took ~1,75 min to copy 200 MB, now it takes about 20 sec.

 

Maybe this helps you, too. First I didn´t believe that this changed so much for me.

 

Have fun

 

Llion