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Need a LAN speed test utilityDoes anyone know of a little utility that would test the speed of the
connection between my computers on my network? Please don't suggest Ping, that pings the other computer 4 times and then reports 0 milliseconds. :-) Al Alfred Kaufmann wrote:
> Does anyone know of a little utility that would test the speed of the Speed means more than one thing:> connection between my computers on my network? Please don't suggest Ping, > that pings the other computer 4 times and then reports 0 milliseconds. :-) > > Al > > Ping measures and reports latency. 0 mS is pretty good. ;-) XP's task manager reports connection speed via the Network tab. The most useful speed parameter IMHO is disk-disk STR. To measure STR, create a shared folder on PC-A and map a network drive to it from PC-B, then create a large contiguous file (e.g., a 1 GB file for a 100 Mb/s network link) on that shared folder, then copy it using XP's Explorer ^C and ^V. Use a watch to measure transfer time, and then calculate the STR. Repeat using the shared folder on PC-B and the mapping on PC-A, and repeat for every pair of PCs on your network. Depending on the end-nodes, you may get four different STRs: the four combos of pushing v. pulling data, and source on A v. source on B. With decent XP PCs on a 100 Mb/s net via a Linksys router, I get >75% efficiency in all four cases, but YMMV. -- Cheers, Bob "Bob Willard" <BobwB***@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote in message Yes, I like that too. ;-)news:OtT2XQl1GHA.480@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl... > Ping measures and reports latency. 0 mS is pretty good. ;-) > XP's task manager reports connection speed via the Network tab. I did that and trnaferred a 3GB file from one computer to the other. The > > The most useful speed parameter IMHO is disk-disk STR. To measure STR, > create a shared folder on PC-A and map a network drive to it from > PC-B, then create a large contiguous file (e.g., a 1 GB file for a > 100 Mb/s network link) on that shared folder, then copy it using XP's > Explorer ^C and ^V. Use a watch to measure transfer time, and then > calculate the STR. Network Tab in the task manager showed about an average utilization of 17%. That works out to about 0.17Gbps which is much less than what I expected. I did it again and timed it manually and it worked out to about the same. I thought about what could be causing this bottleneck, the ethernet cards and router are supposed to handle 1Gbps, my cpu is operating around 13% when this transfer is happening so it is not being overloaded, that leaves the hard drives. I have Sata hard drives (1.5Gbps) connected into a mirrored array on both systems so they should not be causing a bottleneck. Then I tried to copy this 3GB file from one hard drive to another in the same machine and I timed it manually; it took 2 minutes 13 seconds ~ or 0.18Gbps. Obviously I can't expect to transfer data from one machine to the other faster than I can internally. Now I need to figure out why my internal hard transfers are so low compared to the advertised maximum. I bought this so that I could use Remote Desktop and I am very happy with that. Al Alfred Kaufmann wrote:
Show quoteHide quote > "Bob Willard" <BobwB***@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote in message Ah. You should know that 1.5 Gb/s is the speed of the SATA interconnect, not> news:OtT2XQl1GHA.480@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl... > > >>Ping measures and reports latency. 0 mS is pretty good. ;-) > > > Yes, I like that too. ;-) > > >>XP's task manager reports connection speed via the Network tab. >> >>The most useful speed parameter IMHO is disk-disk STR. To measure STR, >>create a shared folder on PC-A and map a network drive to it from >>PC-B, then create a large contiguous file (e.g., a 1 GB file for a >>100 Mb/s network link) on that shared folder, then copy it using XP's >>Explorer ^C and ^V. Use a watch to measure transfer time, and then >>calculate the STR. > > > I did that and trnaferred a 3GB file from one computer to the other. The > Network Tab in the task manager showed about an average utilization of 17%. > That works out to about 0.17Gbps which is much less than what I expected. > I did it again and timed it manually and it worked out to about the same. I > thought about what could be causing this bottleneck, the ethernet cards and > router are supposed to handle 1Gbps, my cpu is operating around 13% when > this transfer is happening so it is not being overloaded, that leaves the > hard drives. I have Sata hard drives (1.5Gbps) connected into a mirrored > array on both systems so they should not be causing a bottleneck. > > Then I tried to copy this 3GB file from one hard drive to another in the > same machine and I timed it manually; it took 2 minutes 13 seconds ~ or > 0.18Gbps. Obviously I can't expect to transfer data from one machine to the > other faster than I can internally. Now I need to figure out why my > internal hard transfers are so low compared to the advertised maximum. > > I bought this so that I could use Remote Desktop and I am very happy with > that. > > Al > > the speed of the HDs. My pretty decent SATA HD (a 10K RPM 74GB Raptor) peaks at ~72 MB/s STR on the outer cylinders. Your wording makes me wonder if you are expecting mirroring to deliver better single-stream performance than a single HD, which would be wrong. With a decent implementation, a MirrorSet (RAID-1) should have about the same STR as a single HD (assuming equal HDs); no better, but not much worse. But a StripeSet (RAID-0) should deliver nearly double the single HD. 3GB/2:13 ~= 3000MB/133secs ~= 22 MB/s. That's well under what I'd expect for current HDs, but I don't have a guess as to why. I suggest downloading HDtach to see what your HDs actually deliver for STR on your PC; remember to run it in the LongBench mode, with your PC as close to stand-alone as you can make it. -- Cheers, Bob "Bob Willard" <BobwB***@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote in message Yes the sustained read speed of my Maxtors is nowhere near the speed of news:ua7x6Rq1GHA.3908@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl... > Ah. You should know that 1.5 Gb/s is the speed of the SATA interconnect, > not > the speed of the HDs. My pretty decent SATA HD (a 10K RPM 74GB Raptor) > peaks > at ~72 MB/s STR on the outer cylinders. their SATA connection. :-( > Your wording makes me wonder if you are expecting mirroring to deliver HDTach tells me am getting 103.4 MB/s average read and that is almost double > better > single-stream performance than a single HD, which would be wrong. With a > decent implementation, a MirrorSet (RAID-1) should have about the same STR > as a single HD (assuming equal HDs); no better, but not much worse. But a > StripeSet (RAID-0) should deliver nearly double the single HD. the single drive sustained read . > 3GB/2:13 ~= 3000MB/133secs ~= 22 MB/s. That's well under what I'd expect The drive I was copying to was an old drive - 31.9 MB/s average read. When > for > current HDs, but I don't have a guess as to why. I copy the file from one partition to another on the raid drive it only took 85 seconds or ... 3000MB/85 = 35.3MB/s. That is a bit faster but not near the 118.7MB/s above. This is probably caused by the hard drive switching from read to write mode. Al Alfred Kaufmann wrote:
> The drive I was copying to was an old drive - 31.9 MB/s average read. When The primary cause of STR loss when copying a large file from one part to> I copy the file from one partition to another on the raid drive it only took > 85 seconds or ... 3000MB/85 = 35.3MB/s. That is a bit faster but not near > the 118.7MB/s above. This is probably caused by the hard drive switching > from read to write mode. > > Al > > another part on the same HD is seeks, not R-to-W switching. Under DOS or WinWhatever, a large file copy is a sequence of: ReadSeek, ReadChunk, WriteSeek, WriteChunk, RepeatUntilDone. If the file size is much larger than the size of the Chunk, then a lot of time will be "wasted" seeking; particularly since the HD's built-in ReadAhead and WriteBehind caching enhances the raw R/W performance. To see this, do a part=>part copy of a large file, and then do a HD=>HD copy, and look at the STR difference. No, I don't know what the current Chunk size is with XP. And yes, there are lots of tricks M$ could deploy to improve copy speed: bigger Chunks, smarter caching, and asynchronous I/O in the app to take advantage of HD command queuing. Not clear to me, however, that copy speed is something that M$ should focus on. -- Cheers, Bob Alfred Kaufmann wrote:
>>Your wording makes me wonder if you are expecting mirroring to deliver You've managed to violate the laws of physics; perpetual motion is next. 8-)>>better >>single-stream performance than a single HD, which would be wrong. With a >>decent implementation, a MirrorSet (RAID-1) should have about the same STR >>as a single HD (assuming equal HDs); no better, but not much worse. But a >>StripeSet (RAID-0) should deliver nearly double the single HD. > > > HDTach tells me am getting 103.4 MB/s average read and that is almost double > the single drive sustained read . Simple mirroring just does not enhance single-stream read performance of a sequential file. I can think of two possibilities: 1. You actually have RAID-0 (StripeSet) instead of a RAID-1 MirrorSet; or, maybe a RAID-01 or RAID-10 combination. For a single-stream read of a large file, RAID-0/01/10 could nearly double the STR. 2. You have a RAID-1 (MirrorSet) with enough total cache (between the two HD's read-ahead caches and the RAIDbox's cache) to fool HDtach. To confirm or deny this, create a HUGEFILE, then fire up a Command window (looks like DOS under XP, but it ain't), and do COPY HUGEFILE NUL, timing the copy with your watch to calculate the STR. -- Cheers, Bob Alfred Kaufmann wrote:
> Does anyone know of a little utility that would test the speed of the http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/> connection between my computers on my network? Please don't suggest Ping, > that pings the other computer 4 times and then reports 0 milliseconds. :-) > > Al This will test your bandwidth to the net. Your network card should report what it is connected at (10/100/1000). Is this what you mean? -Jim "jtpr" <jtpr***@gmail.com> wrote in message My speed to the net is pityful and that is not going to change anytime soon, news:1158084003.440163.122250@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com... > http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/ > > This will test your bandwidth to the net. Your network card should > report what it is connected at (10/100/1000). Is this what you mean? > > -Jim > I was testing my home lan network. Windows XP reports I am connected at 1.0Gbps; it is nice to see but when you only get 0.18Gbps you may have wasted your money. Al 
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