Slow Ghost imaging over TCP/IP

[Chris]

Hi

I have a peer to peer network of three PCs with a router. I'm using
Ghost 2003 (latest build) to image/clone partitions from PC to PC. I
have created Ghost peer-peer boot disks for each PC and I can get the
TCP/IP connection up and running by booting the PCs with the floppies
(all using PC-Dos).

Two of my PCs have identical Realtek NICs and I get a 100 Mbits/s
connection between them with the imaging progressing at over 200MB/min,
which is acceptable.

However, the third PC, a laptop, has a NatSemi MacPhyter DP83815/83816
NIC, which cannot be changed for obvious reasons. I have created a Ghost
peer to peer disk by adding the appropriate NIC drivers when using the
boot disk wizard. It boots the laptop fine, and I get a TCP/IP
connection between the MacPhyter and one of the PCs with a Realtek NIC,
and I can image partitions etc ... Trouble is, the imaging goes at about
25MB/min - way slower than when both NICs are Realtek. I assume that the
NatSemi NIC is limiting itself to 10Mbits/sec. I have the latest NDIS
driver (v1.16) downloaded from the NatSemi website (the same one as
listed on Bart's site). I wonder if it could be a setting in my
Protocol.ini file? It reads:

[protman]
drivername=PROTMAN$

[pktdrv]
drivername=PKTDRV$
bindings=nic
intvec=0x60
chainvec=0x66

[nic]
drivername = DP83815$
TXQUEUE = 8
RXQUEUE = 8
MEDIATYPE = AUTO


Anything need changing there?

TIA
Chris

 

[Chris]

Okay, I found the answer by digging around the Symantec site.
The NatSemi 83815/816 NIC emulates a 3C90X, and there is a problem
with that NIC and Ghost:
"Poor performance when using a 3Com 905b NIC set at 100 megabits"
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...00/NT/Me/98/XP&src=sg&pcode=ghost&svy=&csm=no

Sorry about the long URL!
The 3C90X will not do full duplex at 100Mbits/s and you must force
half duplex in protocol.ini, or using a configuration utility. Now the
last part of my protocol.ini file reads:

[nic]
drivername = DP83815$
MEDIATYPE=HUNHALF

... and that's it. Now I get over 200MB/min image creation (with fast
compression enabled), just as with my other PCs. I tried setting
TXQUEUE and RXQUEUE as before but it didn't increase throughput any
further, so I left them out in the end.

Chris


On Sun, 04 Jan 2004 10:50:50 +0000, Chris