LAN problem: 400mb takes half an hour to transfer!

[akerman]

Wow. I thought it was my wireless connection giving me problems, so I tried to switch it off, and connect my desktop and my notebook via LAN - they are both connected to my router which doubles as a 100mbit switch. Problem is, the transfer speed is sooooooooooooo slow. It's not even 10Mbit, as it takes about 30 minutes to transfer 400 megabytes of data from one computer to the other.

Does anyone have any idea, why this is happening, and how to solve it?

[akerman]

ok even weirder:

I have three computers plugged into my switch.
a) the desktop pc
b) ibm thinkpad
c) my father's laptop

as said before, it takes 30 mins to transfer 400mb from a to b.
but it takes 10 minutes to transfer 5gb from b to c!?!

[XCoalMiner]

I have the same problem, and was getting ready to post a similar question on here. I'm goign crazy trying to find the root cause of the slowdown.

I've been reading that either a firewall or antivirus software was the likely problem. I did a test, disabled both of those, and unfortunately still sloooow. In my case the firewall is ZoneAlarm 4.5 (feee), and Norton '04, (IBM's OEM version) .

I can confirm the problem is not limited to the wireless connection, the wired nic card does the same thing. But, curiously, the slowness is in one direction only: When I grab a file from a network drive and copy it to my T41 it's painfully slow (400 Mb will take about 90 minutes). However, moving a file in the other direction (putting a file from T14 to the mapped network drive) works as fast as expected with two 100 M LAN connections. A few more things, download speed tests off the public internet are correct, 3 Mb +/-, (in fact they are faster than the file copy!).

I haven't yet tried from the other perspective -- mapping the T41's drive from the network-drive machine -- and putting (or getting) files from the T41. If someone thinks this info. will help in troublehooting, reply back.

[s0larian]

Disabling Norton AV 04 is a good guess, because if you transfer large file to your laptop, Norton needs lots of time checking for a virus in the transferred files.

[XCoalMiner]

Disabling Norton AV 04 is a good guess, because if you transfer large file to your laptop, Norton needs lots of time checking for a virus in the transferred files.

As I said above, I tried with NAV disabled, and still see the extreme slowness when getting a file. Is there something more to disabling than clicking to turn off Auto Protect? I'm a little suspicious it's this easy. [/img]

[s0larian]

For me just disabling Norton in the systray works fine, then the file transfer is much faster. But if you are experiencing problems with your system it is always a good idea to uninstall Norton and see what happens.

[Stingray72]

Disable ur wireless radio (fn + F5) and plugin ur UTP cable into ur RJ45 port on ur thinkpad and do the transfer....It worked for me

[XCoalMiner]

Have tried cable, still same slow speed,

...
I can confirm the problem is not limited to the wireless connection, the wired nic card does the same thing.

[Roy_W]

ok even weirder:

I have three computers plugged into my switch.
a) the desktop pc
b) ibm thinkpad
c) my father's laptop

as said before, it takes 30 mins to transfer 400mb from a to b.
but it takes 10 minutes to transfer 5gb from b to c!?!

One or two little stabs in the dark:

1 : What are the results of "pinging" between the respective machines.

2 : Do all your machines have the same IPconfiguration in relation to DHCP, DNS, and the gateways.

3 o you have Windows firewall or another firewall enabled.

4 : I do not use Norton but is it possible to see in a window or a log what Norton is scanning in realtime. Are you sure that it is really disabled ?

5 : Have you tried the same test after booting into Windows Safe Mode.

6 : If possible try booting from a Bootable Network CD or a Bootable Linux CD and rerun the same tests, ( I doubt that the Wireless lan will work though but at least you can try the RJ45 for throughput ).

Cheers Roy

[akerman]

Well I don't have any AV or firewall installed (win firewall is disabled), so that is definitely not the problem.

The computers are dealt their IPs from the switch/router, which functions as a DHCP server. Haven't tried pinging, I'll try that when I get home!

[admsteiner]

I disable Norton when I do file transfers.

I have a similar setup as you do. My desktop is hardwired to my wireless router and my laptop connects to it (from about 5 feet away, via wireless). I only do file transfers via FTP (Windows seems much slower). Unlike you however, I pretty much max out my connection (I get 10MB per second (80mbit) when transferring between my computer and my brother's, also hardwired to the router).

So, couple of questions:
1) Are you using FTP to transfer? If yes, make sure that you don't have a limit set for upload/download speeds
2) Are you transferring one file or many files? FTP opens a new connection for each file, which, if you're transferring a lot of files, really takes up a lot of time. If so, try opening up multiple FTP sessions to utilize your bandiwdth more efficiently.

--Adam