We've just installed gigabit switches at work, and things on the Linux side are going well. Our linux boxes, which use a Intel Corporation 82566DM-2 Gigabit nic (according to lspci), consistently get over 900 mbits/sec:
iperf -c ipserver
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to ipserver, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.40.9 port 39823 connected with 192.168.1.115 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.08 GBytes 929 Mbits/sec
We have a bunch of Windows XP 64-bit machines that use Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx cards. I spent around a day trying to get equivalent speeds on them, but couldn't get above 200 Mbits/sec.
I noticed the Windows iperf tests said that the TCP window size was 8 Kb by default (as opposed to 16 Kb on Linux, so I modified my test to reflect that. Still no love.
I went to Broadcom's site, downloaded the latest drivers for the card and installed. Still no love. However, finally, I tried a 64 Kb window size with the new drivers, and finally an improvement!
$ iperf -c ipserver -w64k
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to ipserver, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 64.0 KByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.40.214 port 1848 connected with 192.168.1.115 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 933 MBytes 782 Mbits/sec
Much better, but still not really taking advantage of the full capabilities of the network. If the Linux box can reach 950 Mbits/sec consistently, this box should be able to as well.
Also, if you're wondering about the medium, this is over the same cable…I'm switching back and forth.
Any suggestion or ideas would be really welcome.
Thanks!
Best Answer
I would try booting the Windows machine with a bootable Linux CD like Ubuntu, and check the statistics there, to exclude the possible Hardware issues.