NetGear GA311 GigaBit PCI Adapter

[EdwardATeller]

I just bought two NetGear GA311 GigaBit PCI adapters and a NetGear
GS605 GigaBit Ethernet Switch. I have two computers with the PCI
cards in them connected through my home network into the GS605. Much
of my network is wired into the walls. I'm pretty sure I am not
getting gigabit transfer speeds, and the NetGear utility is reporting
the speed as 100M/Full. The 1000 light is not lit up on the back of
the card.

Is it possible for the cards to detect lower quality cables, and
downshift to 100M speeds?

 

[Paul]

I just bought two NetGear GA311 GigaBit PCI adapters and a NetGear
GS605 GigaBit Ethernet Switch. I have two computers with the PCI
cards in them connected through my home network into the GS605. Much
of my network is wired into the walls. I'm pretty sure I am not
getting gigabit transfer speeds, and the NetGear utility is reporting
the speed as 100M/Full. The 1000 light is not lit up on the back of
the card.

Is it possible for the cards to detect lower quality cables, and
downshift to 100M speeds?

A possible reason, is the number of wires in the cable. Or a bad
connection at the connector itself.

10/100BT uses four wires of the eight in the cable.

1000BT (Gigabit) uses eight wires. If your cable only happens to
have four wires in it, then "no Gigabit for you"

When I first got my current motherboard, the RJ-45 connector was
dirty. Fortunately for me, a second computer had the Marvell VCT
cable tester inside its Ethernet chip, and the cable tester told
me a pin wasn't connected (when I connected the computers together).
I inserted and removed the connector, until VCT said it was
making connections, and then I got Gigabit operation.

In terms of the frequencies involved, the designers of the gigabit
standard, wanted to stay within the same range of frequencies.
They use multilevel signalling, called PAM-5. More details can be
seen in the "1000BASE-T details" section here, as to how that is
possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

Paul

 

[pcbldrNinetyEight]

I just bought two NetGear GA311 GigaBit PCI adapters and a NetGear
GS605 GigaBit Ethernet Switch. I have two computers with the PCI
cards in them connected through my home network into the GS605. Much
of my network is wired into the walls. I'm pretty sure I am not
getting gigabit transfer speeds, and the NetGear utility is reporting
the speed as 100M/Full. The 1000 light is not lit up on the back of
the card.

Is it possible for the cards to detect lower quality cables, and
downshift to 100M speeds?

Test your equipment by connecting it together directly with cat5e patch
cables capable of Gigabit speeds. Available here:
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/SearchProducts.asp?categoryID=132

 

[EdwardATeller]

Test your equipment by connecting it together directly with cat5e patch
cables capable of Gigabit speeds. Available here:http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/SearchProducts.asp?categoryID=132

Thanks for the quick replies. I did have a bad cable, which I
replaced, and now I am running at full speed. One thing I learned is
that sometimes I had to power cycle the switch for it to recognize a
better cable.

It isn't as fast as I thought it would be. I have my old router
plugged into the gigabit switch for internet access, and that
connection lights up as 100. Maybe that slows the whole switch down.
I'll do some testing when I have more time.

Bottom line, make sure you have good cables. Also, don't have your
switch in the basement and computers on the 2nd floor unless you want
some serious exercise.

 

[John McGaw]

Thanks for the quick replies. I did have a bad cable, which I
replaced, and now I am running at full speed. One thing I learned is
that sometimes I had to power cycle the switch for it to recognize a
better cable.

It isn't as fast as I thought it would be. I have my old router
plugged into the gigabit switch for internet access, and that
connection lights up as 100. Maybe that slows the whole switch down.
I'll do some testing when I have more time.

Bottom line, make sure you have good cables. Also, don't have your
switch in the basement and computers on the 2nd floor unless you want
some serious exercise.

No, the router won't affect the overall speed of the network -- that is
one of the advantages of a switch. Computers capable of gigabit speed
will communicate at some mutually-agreed speed up to the limit among
themselves while the internet connection will happen at either 10 or 100
depending on the setup. But since the internet connection will never be
very fast (relatively speaking) this is of no matter.

You can verify for yourself that the router doesn't affect speeds
between computers by testing speed with it connected to the switch and
without it. Oh, btw, you will probably never seen anything like true
gigabit transfers despite the name unless your network has proper CAT-6
wiring done perfectly. And probably not even then. I consider myself
lucky when I manage 50mB/s (500mb/s, or half-gigabit) transfers over my
CAT-5e wiring.

 

[EdwardATeller]

No, the router won't affect the overall speed of the network -- that is
one of the advantages of a switch. Computers capable of gigabit speed
will communicate at some mutually-agreed speed up to the limit among
themselves while the internet connection will happen at either 10 or 100
depending on the setup. But since the internet connection will never be
very fast (relatively speaking) this is of no matter.

You can verify for yourself that the router doesn't affect speeds
between computers by testing speed with it connected to the switch and
without it. Oh, btw, you will probably never seen anything like true
gigabit transfers despite the name unless your network has proper CAT-6
wiring done perfectly. And probably not even then. I consider myself
lucky when I manage 50mB/s (500mb/s, or half-gigabit) transfers over my
CAT-5e wiring.

I spent some time testing my network, and you are exactly right.
Having the router plugged into the switch did not affect transfer
speeds between the gigabit-enabled computers. You are also right
about not coming close to gigabit transfer speeds. I moved a file,
listed by Windows as 2,189,264 KB, for the test. It took 215 seconds
using the gigabit adapters, and it took 267 seconds using the T100
adapters. That is less than a 20% improvement, so I am taking the
equipment back to the store. I guess I was thinking it would be 10
times faster, which would be worth it, but a small improvement like
that is not.

Maybe I could buy new cables and improve the situation, but much of
the cable run is behind drywall, so I will just be a little patient
while the files transfer and save a few bucks. Thanks for the help.

 

[Paul]

I spent some time testing my network, and you are exactly right.
Having the router plugged into the switch did not affect transfer
speeds between the gigabit-enabled computers. You are also right
about not coming close to gigabit transfer speeds. I moved a file,
listed by Windows as 2,189,264 KB, for the test. It took 215 seconds
using the gigabit adapters, and it took 267 seconds using the T100
adapters. That is less than a 20% improvement, so I am taking the
equipment back to the store. I guess I was thinking it would be 10
times faster, which would be worth it, but a small improvement like
that is not.

Maybe I could buy new cables and improve the situation, but much of
the cable run is behind drywall, so I will just be a little patient
while the files transfer and save a few bucks. Thanks for the help.

You're not trying hard enough

I played with my two Gigabit equipped computers, and wanted to see
what they could do.

First step, was to set up a RAM disk on each computer. The purpose
of that, is to remove the hard drive performance from the equation.

The second step, was the network protocol. I selected FTP as the
most likely candidate to give me fat bandwidth numbers. I set up an
FTPD on one machine, and a client on the other.

By doing that, I was barely able to hit 40MB/sec on a Gigabit link.
But that was using Win2K on the computers, and Win2K isn't the best
at driving the network. Apparently WinXP can do better.

Give it another shot. Even if you don't bother with the RAM disks
on either end, FTP should allow you to do better than that.

I didn't get to use jumbo frames on my setup, because one of the
computers was running ICS at the time (two NICs). And with Win2K
holding me back, there wasn't much point anyway.

Paul

 

[kony]

Oh, btw, you will probably never seen anything like true
gigabit transfers despite the name unless your network has proper CAT-6
wiring done perfectly. And probably not even then. I consider myself
lucky when I manage 50mB/s (500mb/s, or half-gigabit) transfers over my
CAT-5e wiring.

Unless the run was exceptionally long or through very noisey
areas then CAT5e can carry the bandwidth. Limitations are
more often the network chip on the NIC(s), operating system
overhead, bus (PCI 32bit/33MHz particularly) bottlenecks, or
the source and/or destination media.

 

[kony]

I didn't get to use jumbo frames on my setup, because one of the
computers was running ICS at the time (two NICs). And with Win2K
holding me back, there wasn't much point anyway.

Win2k is not the bottleneck (yet) at 40MB/s.

 

[EdwardATeller]

You're not trying hard enough

I played with my two Gigabit equipped computers, and wanted to see
what they could do.

First step, was to set up a RAM disk on each computer. The purpose
of that, is to remove the hard drive performance from the equation.

The second step, was the network protocol. I selected FTP as the
most likely candidate to give me fat bandwidth numbers. I set up an
FTPD on one machine, and a client on the other.

By doing that, I was barely able to hit 40MB/sec on a Gigabit link.
But that was using Win2K on the computers, and Win2K isn't the best
at driving the network. Apparently WinXP can do better.

Give it another shot. Even if you don't bother with the RAM disks
on either end, FTP should allow you to do better than that.

I didn't get to use jumbo frames on my setup, because one of the
computers was running ICS at the time (two NICs). And with Win2K
holding me back, there wasn't much point anyway.

Paul

Thanks, but I returned the equipment. The application was to play Hi-
Def video files over the network. That probably means using Win XP
file transfer, not FTP. The videos just didn't play smoothly, so my
thoughts about setting up my DVR in the basement, and serving up the
files to the living room, have faded away for now.

 

[kony]

Thanks, but I returned the equipment. The application was to play Hi-
Def video files over the network. That probably means using Win XP
file transfer, not FTP. The videos just didn't play smoothly, so my
thoughts about setting up my DVR in the basement, and serving up the
files to the living room, have faded away for now.

You haven't mentioned what the bitrate is on those HD
videos, but the roughly 8MB/s any 100Mb NIC can attain
should give most common final output (not lossless or raw)
video enough bandwidth. IOW, it probably wasn't the lan
making the video play choppy, though if processing power was
marginal, a little extra overhead during network transfers
could make things worse for the processor to handle the
load.

 

[EdwardATeller]

You haven't mentioned what the bitrate is on those HD
videos, but the roughly 8MB/s any 100Mb NIC can attain
should give most common final output (not lossless or raw)
video enough bandwidth. IOW, it probably wasn't the lan
making the video play choppy, though if processing power was
marginal, a little extra overhead during network transfers
could make things worse for the processor to handle the
load.

The bitrate for HD videos varies a lot. One was about 8,000 Kb/s and
another was about 17,000 Kb/s, as reported by the statistics in Media
Player Classic. The videos file-transfer faster than the time it
takes to play them, so clearly it isn't a straight function of the
transfer rate. In any case, the gigabit equipment I bought didn't
work out of the box, so I took it back.