Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

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dscriven
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Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#1 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-16 01:55

I'm in a building where there is 1Gbps network. I'm connecting two computers, both with Gigabit cards, in different parts of the building. Try as I might, the transfer (both upload and download) rate of files ranging from 100 MB to 2GB in size will not exceed 100 Mbps. The Gigabit cards are connected directly to their ports. One machine (the server) is a 4-core i5-3790 with 64GB of RAM running Win 7 64, while the client is a 20-core Xeon with 128 GB of RAM running an up-to-date Win 10 64. All transfers are plain vanilla FTP. I've set the server to use 4 cores.

As an experiment I loaded the FileZilla server on a local (two rooms down) 4 core i7 Win 7 64 computer with 16GB RAM, which is on the same subnet as the Xeon. As before, the maximum transfer rate was just less than 100Mbps.

On a usual day I have to transfer 150-200GB of data, consisting mostly of 2GB files, which is taking 3-4 hours, (8 multiple transfers seems to give the best transfer rate), but if I could get 1/2 the theoretical speed, it would done in less than an hour, which is important because data transfer and data acquisition are mutually exclusive. Does anyone have any idea where I should look for the bottle neck? FileZilla settings (client and server?) Windows? The network?

I'd be grateful for any ideas.

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botg
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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#2 Post by botg » 2018-06-16 08:30

Are you using Windows Defender or any other AV product? They have a huge impact on transfer speeds.

Looking at CPU usage, does either the client or the server max out a CPU core during a transfer?

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#3 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-18 21:03

I've switched off all the 'real time protection' in the Windows Defender files. I've checked that the cables are all Cat 5E. Still maxing out at 98.9 Mbps.

One core (19) of the 20 core client is maxing out cyclically - ie. CPU activity looks like a series of fingers that have their tips at 100%. None of the other cores have significant (above 2% actiivity). The client has six hard drives of which one is a 6TB WD High performance which is what I'm using for the tests. None of the other HDs are active during the tests.

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#4 Post by botg » 2018-06-19 07:25

To avoid confusion: Are you talking about bits or bytes? Network link speeds are given in bits, file transfer software on the other hand displays speeds in bytes. On a gitabit/s link, getting about 100 megabyte/s is pretty good.

dscriven
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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#5 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-19 21:05

Hi Tim,
First, thank you for taking the time to discuss this problem with me.

I'm talking about bits not Bytes. At 1Gbps a GB should take about 10-12s to transfer - on this system it's taking about 70s (actually 23-24 min to transfer 19.7GB)

You didn't comment on the one core maxing out which you had previously asked about.

David

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#6 Post by botg » 2018-06-19 21:18

Do you have FTP over TLS enabled in the server? FileZilla automatically uses FTP over TLS if the server supports it (security first). CPUs as old as your i5-3790 I couldn't even find on ark.intel.com, don't support AES-NI and thus cannot saturate gitabit ethernet with encrypted traffic. CPUs with AES-NI however have no problems saturating gitabit ethernet.

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#7 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-21 01:26

The data server has a i5-3570 (not 3970, my typo) CPU which has AES-NI as does the test server (the nearby server on the same floor) which has a i7-2600 CPU. The client has dual Xeon E2630 v4 which also have the AES-NI. Adding FTP_TLS makes no difference to the speed - maxes out at 98.7 Mbps - a 250MB file took 21 seconds to transfer.

I also tried transferring from a Linux machine using vsftpd, to the client. The Linux machine (i7-2600, 16GB RAM, Gigabit ethernet card) is in the same room, but on a different port. As before, it maxed out at 98.7 Mbps. (The value next to transfer of an individual file maxes at 11.3 MiB/s) All of these trials use the same client, so the fault could either be there or on the network If there's nothing else to try, I'll have to ask our IT to start investigating the network to see if there's something throttling the network.

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#8 Post by boco » 2018-06-21 05:27

And the negotiated network speeds are all 1000MBit/s, for all involved NICs? Cat5E cables might, depending on total length, only allow a stable 100MBit/s connection. I'm using Cat 6 and 7 cables and the Gigabit connections are all stable (Auto-negotiation).
Further possible issues could be with managed switches using rate limitation and/or prioritization.
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dscriven
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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#9 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-21 23:37

It was the cable from the client to the port. Although it was CAT5E it was bringing the speed of the internet down to 100Mbps, when replaced with a CAT6 the speed immediately went to 1Gbps. On the test server I was getting 982Mbps (according to Windows Task Manager) when transferring a 250MB file and just a bit less than that when transferring 4 200 MB files.

The picture was more complex when transferring the 2GB files from the (more distant) data server which is on a different network.
Transferring a single 2GB file was incredibly quick: 19 sec (@ 960 Mbps), however 2 2GB files dropped the rate down to about 220-300 Mbps taking 108s for the transfer. When I used an 8 file transfer, (the original setting on the client) the rate varied between a low of 110 Mbps to a high of 500 Mbps. Six of the files engaged in a rapid transfer, while 7 & 8 hardly changed until one of 1st six finished. The first four (i.e 8 GB) took about 300s. As each file finished, the rate of transfer increased. I was wondering if these results could be explained by the hard drive read speed dropping when forced to do multiple reads from different large files? This could, in turn, limit the transfer speed.

Since I have no idea what else is going on in the network these are only rough estimates, but it would seem that my best bet to achieve high speed transfer would be to set the FileZilla client to single file transfer. Are there any settings on the server that should be tweeked?

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#10 Post by dscriven » 2018-06-22 01:03

Additional info:
I just transferred 40 2GB files limiting the client to 1 connection. Throughput speed varied from a low of 110 Mbps to a high of 986 Mbps - the majority of the time it was between 750 - 980 Mbps. Transfer time for 2 GB ranged from 18 - 57s, with the majority taking 20s. I couldn't ask for anything better!

Thank you for all the help and advice - my compliments on writing a truly excellent program!

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Re: Cannot exceed 100Mbps on 1000Mbps network

#11 Post by botg » 2018-06-22 06:51

I was wondering if these results could be explained by the hard drive read speed dropping when forced to do multiple reads from different large files? This could, in turn, limit the transfer speed.
Yes, traditional spinning rust doesn't handle such workloads well. Doing more than one thing at a time and disk throughput plummets. If you can, invest in an SSD, the difference is like night and day, they are superior in every way, except sadly the price.

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