Speed, local network

Associate
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
290
Location
UK
Hi,

I've recently built a very low power PC that I'm using as a central file storage PC. I'm also using it to stream movies to my 3 Pi's, but I'm getting a little frustrated with slow transfer speeds when I'm transferring movies from one PC to the next. I get about 11mb/sec.

The set up I was using;

PC > 10/100 Switch > Router > File PC.

So to test the speeds I made the follow changes;

PC > Router > File PC (Avoiding the limiting switch)

After this change the transfer speeds over the local network was still coming out at 11mb/sec.

I checked the spec of the router (BT Home Hub 3) and it states 300mb/s. Am I right in saying that standard hard drives (5400/7200) read and write faster than 11mb/sec right? If so, where do you think my problem lies?

Thanks
Craig
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2003
Posts
7,171
Location
Shropshire
300Mbps is probably going to be headline WiFi speeds, so not applicable when using cables.

Fast Ethernet is 100 Megabits / second (Mbps) and works out at a theoretical transfer rate of 12.5 Megabytes / Second (MB/s), so getting 11MB/s is close to the maximum.

If you want to go faster with cables, you need Gigabit switches and network cards.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
290
Location
UK
Sorry to be a pain but I've never really understood networking. So if something is 100 Megabits/second how does it end up being a theoretical transfer speed of 12.5MB/s?

What do you mean? So avoid the router all together? I think the motherboards are gigabit connections.

or would this set up increase speeds;

PC and File PC > Gigabit switch > Router.
 
Last edited:
Don
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
46,744
Location
Parts Unknown
MB and Mb aren't the same thing.

MegaByte and Megabit

If you had a Gigabit lan connection, you could get ~125MB/s transfer speeds.

On a Pi, the most you'll ever get is 11-12MB/s as they have 100Mbit ethernet.


Home hub 3 only has 1x gigabit port (pointless).
 
Last edited:
Associate
OP
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
290
Location
UK
OH! You know what, this has cleared so much up it's unreal. ha! I'm not transferring to the Pi, I'm only transferring PC to PC. Just streaming to the Pi's :)

So I need a new router with Gigabit sockets and a Gigabit switch and I should get my desired speeds! :)

Awesome. I really appreciate you both clearing that up for me!
 
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