Gigabit Direct Connection Over CAT6

[Big Booger]

Gigabit Ethernet LAN: SLOW SPEED
New to the speed guide boards,
Bought two new Gigabit Realtek PCI ethernet adapters. Have them installed in two PCs. One P4 1.6, 768MB RAMBUS, 180GB HDD, IBM and , one Celery 680Mhz, 256MB ram, 15GB HDD Maxtor.

I have them connected via CAT 6 cable.

Problem is the maximum speed I can get the LAN up to is nearly 200MBIT, usually about 150-160mBit.

I have tried auto negotiation and 1000mbit/full duplex.. settings..
Neither improved the speed at all. These cards are directly connected, there is no hub, router, or switch. I have them installed so that I can swap files back and forth as fast and efficiently as the hardware will allow...

Just need some help getting past this.


Current Settings:
RWIN= 474280
TTL = 64
MTU =1460

I have both cards set to Full Duplex 1000mbit... but I cannot get that performance.

Also, when I test the card thoroughput with itself, I am getting about 350Mbit per second.

The IP addressing goes like so

2 100mbit cards are set with manual IP, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS. They are connected to an I/O Data 100mbit Router.

2 1000mbit cards are set to auto-config the IP, subnet, and gateway... but the DNS is set the same as the 2 100mbit cards.

The 1000mbit cards have DHCP enabled.

I am using Q-check to test the thoroughput, using a 1000kilobyte packet.. through the 1000mbit IP addresses, one used as host the other as client...

Q-check is installed on both machines.

Any ideas about how I can get near the 1000mbit speeds? I am at my wits end here.
Thanks for any help or information.

[cyberskye]

50% throughput on a RealTek card is good ;)

[Big Booger]

but 200-250Mbit is not even 50% :(

Is there any other tweak or setting that I should attempt to get better performance from these cards?

I would really like to transfer at the best speed possible.

Thanks

[TonyT]

What protocol are you using to transfer files? Use Netbeui, it's faster than TCP and more secure because it's non-routable. Unbind TCP from MSClient and unbind it from File&Print Sharing on all networked computers.

Also, it seems your postt is a bit confusing, first you say "no router", a direct cabkle connection, in which case a crossover cable is needed, and sencondly you say you are using a router?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Also what OS is on each machine...thinking the Celery box might have Win98 on it..which is quite useless and clueless on how to operate at giga speeds...doesn't do well.

[Big Booger]

Sorry for the confusion.

The OSes are Windows XP Pro on both machines.

I will try Netbui tonight.

Further, I should clarify something a bit about the router.

Gigabit cards are connected directly to each other via a CAT6 cable, that I am assuming is a crossover cable, because I can transfer files just fine...

I have 2 NICS in each PC, (1) 100mbit and (1) 1000Mbit. They are not bridged, and both work fine.

The 100 mbit cards are connected to the router and are used to surf the web via an 8mbit ADSL connection.

The 1000mbit cards I want to use to transfer files, and stream movies, audio, web cam etc...

Hope that clarifies my situation.

Thanks for the respones.

I also found some information from one of Tom's Hardware Reviews:
If you were wondering whether you'll have to ditch ol' faithful and buy a shiny new computer to make the jump to gigabit Ethernet, the answer is a firm "maybe." Citing a rough rule of thumb of 1Hz of "modern" processor speed for each bit per second (bps) of TCP/IP network traffic, a manufacturer of gigabit networking gear told me that any machine running at a processor speed of below 700MHz or so would have a hard time keeping a gigabit pipe full. That's not to say that with the right OS, an older machine wouldn't get any improvement from a gigabit connection. You just might see speeds in the 100-500Mbps range rather than anything approaching a full gigabit.

So it would seem that the celery 680 might be the culprit.. but before I go out and upgrade, I want to exhaust every other possibility.

Thanks