Slow and wierd Network problem

[Philip]

I have the following home network:

XP Machine (athlon XP 1600+, Mx400 video cord with 64 meg, 768 meg
memory)
Windows 95 Machine (Pentium 233, old ati video card with 8 meg, 256
memory)
Cable modem connected to cable modem router (wired, 10/100).

When I transfer a large file (175 meg) between the two machiines, I
get the following results:

Using the XP machine and the XP file manager, it takes 125 seconds
(1.4 meg/sec) to transfer the file to the Win 95 machine. To tranfer
the same file from the 95 machine to the XP it takes 79 seconds (4.4
meg/sec).

If I am using the windows 95 machine using Norton file manager it
takes 52 seconds (3.4 Meg/sec) to transfer the file to the XP Machine
and only 40 sec (4.4 meg/sec) to copy the file from the XP machine.

Why are the rates (which are repeatable) so different? The transfer of
the same file varied from 40 to 125 seconds. I would have expected the
speeds to be similar from the same machine. Are there some settings on
the machines I screwed up?

Also surfing the web is significantly faster on the XP machine. Why?
Is this mainly caused by the slower processor and graphics card? I
have a broadband connection.

What should I be looking at? I appreciate any ideas. Thanks.

Philip

 

[Bob Willard]

I have the following home network:

XP Machine (athlon XP 1600+, Mx400 video cord with 64 meg, 768 meg
memory)
Windows 95 Machine (Pentium 233, old ati video card with 8 meg, 256
memory)
Cable modem connected to cable modem router (wired, 10/100).

When I transfer a large file (175 meg) between the two machiines, I
get the following results:

Using the XP machine and the XP file manager, it takes 125 seconds
(1.4 meg/sec) to transfer the file to the Win 95 machine. To tranfer
the same file from the 95 machine to the XP it takes 79 seconds (4.4
meg/sec).

If I am using the windows 95 machine using Norton file manager it
takes 52 seconds (3.4 Meg/sec) to transfer the file to the XP Machine
and only 40 sec (4.4 meg/sec) to copy the file from the XP machine.

Why are the rates (which are repeatable) so different? The transfer of
the same file varied from 40 to 125 seconds. I would have expected the
speeds to be similar from the same machine. Are there some settings on
the machines I screwed up?

Also surfing the web is significantly faster on the XP machine. Why?
Is this mainly caused by the slower processor and graphics card? I
have a broadband connection.

What should I be looking at? I appreciate any ideas. Thanks.

Philip

Transfer rates between XP and W9x PCs are frequently quite different
for the four cases (pushing from XP, pulling to XP, pushing from W9x,
pulling to W9x). The OS matters, the HD (and the path to the HD)
matters, the NIC sometimes matters, etc.

You might make some improvement in file transfer rates by making
the MTUs in both PCs and in the router the same. And, you might
make some improvement by making RWINs bigger. Also, you might
see improvement by using an account (username/password) on the XP
PC which matches the one you are using on the W9x PC. But, you
should not expect symmetrical STRs.

 

[Philip]

Bob:

Thanks. Can you define MTU and RWINs so I can try your advice? Also
any ideas why the 95 machine is so slow surfing? When directed
connected without the router it is much faster. Thanks.

Philip

 

[Philip]

Bob:

I ran a tweak test at www.dslreports.com and the recommendation was to
lower the RWIN from 64240 to 37960 for the 95 machine. This made a
slight improvement on the 95 machine. Still the web seems slow. The
slow data transfer between the machine is probably driven by old hard
drives.

Any other thoughts on why internet surfing is slow?

Philip

 

[Bob Willard]

Bob:

I ran a tweak test at www.dslreports.com and the recommendation was to
lower the RWIN from 64240 to 37960 for the 95 machine. This made a
slight improvement on the 95 machine. Still the web seems slow. The
slow data transfer between the machine is probably driven by old hard
drives.

Any other thoughts on why internet surfing is slow?

Philip

Here's a place to get def's of tech. terms & TLAs like MTU:
- http://webopedia.internet.com/TERM/M/MTU.html
(FWIW, TLA => Three Letter Acronym.)

If your HDs are slow enough to affect transfer rates on your LAN,
then they may be slow enough to affect transfer rates from the
web, because all of those inbound pages get cached on your HD.
But HD speed is, I suspect, a minor culprit in the STRs you see;
remember that the same HDs are used for file copies in all cases,
although sometimes the faster HD is reading and sometimes it is
writing.

To measure what you really get on upload/download speeds, I suggest
creating a large file, then upload it to your private disk space on
your ISP using FTP in binary mode, then download it back to your PCs
the same way. Adjust the file size so that you can get reasonably
accurate STR data with your watch and a calculator. {Some FTP apps,
such as my favorite from Ipswitch, display accurate STR results; some
do not.} Once you know what your connection to the web delivers
for simple uploads and downloads, then you have data to decide if
your perceived slowness is due to poor download performance, or due
to poor latency or slow (CPU/VGA) graphical conversion.