My previous experiences regarding my new gigabit network were disappointing. I studied the problem further by using iperf to generate raw traffic between my two Linux PCs and using KSysGuard and iftop to monitor the traffic. Now I got a whopping 950Mb/s, near the theoretical maximum. Well, it should have gone over 1000Mb/s, so there's still something lacking a bit.
The gigabit LAN with 1000baseT/FD link mode is supposed to be full duplex, so I tried two-way traffic with iperf. The result was, however, roughly a gigabit in total, so in effect it was half-duplex. This may be due to the PCI bus that the integrated network card uses. Normal PCI is a 32-bit bus and operates at 33Mhz frequency, giving (32*33M) roughly one gigabit of capacity. But, that is the entire bus capacity, it is shared with other devices, and full duplex gigabit would need twice that. So, ok, I got near the maximum.
The performance of Buffalo LinkStation still feels strange. With KDE's file manager as well as with smbclient, I got some 10MB/s. By actually mounting it as a filesystem with smbmount, I only got a fraction of that, perhaps some 1.5MB/s. That's 1.5% of the "gigabit" capacity! With Windows XP under Vmware, I got about the same as with Linux smbclient, some 10MB/s. I'm yet to test it with non-vmware XP more accurately, but it may be a bit faster.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Assembly of Ungoliant
I updated my hardware recently, so I'll tell all the interesting details here.
I first bought a new case with 500W power supply for a motherboard I planned to buy from my fellow worker. Unfortunately, the chipset fan on the motherboard had gone bad and created great amount of problems when playing games, so I made a quick purchase at local hardware store.
The Antec Sonata case was a really pleasant surprise. First of all, it looks good, which its shining black finish -- the primary reason for naming the machine Ungoliant. Unfortunately, the black finish is very tender and I got it badly scratched very easily. Maybe I should have bought some lacquer to protect it from the environment. Another pleasant thing was the organization of hard drives so that they are loaded on sleds and are easily accessible from the side. The side panel opens easily with a handle. On the back there is an adjustable case fan. On the front panel there are two beautiful blue leds, one for power and one for hard drive. This case is a dream.
So, I got the stuff, piled it on my desk at work, and started unboxing.
The Core 2 Quad processor was really small and had an enormous fan. Here, I have removed the bottom cover and all the connectors are visible. In the center, there are some small components.
The cooler element had interesting pattern. At the bottom, it had the paste already spread, so I just needed to attach it on the processor.
Mounting the processor in the socket was easy. Mounting the cooler+fan on the processor wasn't. It had to be fastened to the motherboard with four hatches and I have to say, it was really hard and needed a lot of muscle. Fortunately, my fellow worker with more experience in assembling machines helped me with the cooler a bit so I got it fastened safely.
The rest was easy. Below is the motherboard with just the graphics card missing. The chipset is cooled with a heat pipe. I later noticed that the 2x2GB RAM combs were actually just 1GB. I returned them to the store and got my 2GBs.
Below is Ungoliant ready to be transported to its lair:
I first bought a new case with 500W power supply for a motherboard I planned to buy from my fellow worker. Unfortunately, the chipset fan on the motherboard had gone bad and created great amount of problems when playing games, so I made a quick purchase at local hardware store.
- Intel Core 2 Quad q6600 G0 2,4GHz processor
- Abit IP35 ATX motherboard with Sata2, Gigabit LAN and so on
- MSI GeForce 8800 GT 512MB OverClocked graphics card
- 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM
- DVD-RW drive (I needed a new one in black - oh the vanity)
- Antec Sonata III case with 500W power supply
The Antec Sonata case was a really pleasant surprise. First of all, it looks good, which its shining black finish -- the primary reason for naming the machine Ungoliant. Unfortunately, the black finish is very tender and I got it badly scratched very easily. Maybe I should have bought some lacquer to protect it from the environment. Another pleasant thing was the organization of hard drives so that they are loaded on sleds and are easily accessible from the side. The side panel opens easily with a handle. On the back there is an adjustable case fan. On the front panel there are two beautiful blue leds, one for power and one for hard drive. This case is a dream.
So, I got the stuff, piled it on my desk at work, and started unboxing.
The Core 2 Quad processor was really small and had an enormous fan. Here, I have removed the bottom cover and all the connectors are visible. In the center, there are some small components.
The cooler element had interesting pattern. At the bottom, it had the paste already spread, so I just needed to attach it on the processor.
Mounting the processor in the socket was easy. Mounting the cooler+fan on the processor wasn't. It had to be fastened to the motherboard with four hatches and I have to say, it was really hard and needed a lot of muscle. Fortunately, my fellow worker with more experience in assembling machines helped me with the cooler a bit so I got it fastened safely.
The rest was easy. Below is the motherboard with just the graphics card missing. The chipset is cooled with a heat pipe. I later noticed that the 2x2GB RAM combs were actually just 1GB. I returned them to the store and got my 2GBs.
Below is Ungoliant ready to be transported to its lair:
Monday, February 11, 2008
Gigantic disappointment in gigabit
I bought a cheap 35€ gigabit switch on saturday and some more cat-6 cables, in an attempt to get my home network upgraded to gigabit speeds. It failed.
I found out that my new "gigabit" 500GB Buffalo LinkStation was not able to provide more than one tenth of the gigabit, about 10MB/s with Samba from Linux. With FTP, I was able to get enormous 15MB/s. With Windows XP, the access may have been a bit faster, though I did not measure that more accurately, because Windows doesn't report transfer speed when copying files. Between two Linux PCs, I got a maximum of 35MB/s with scp. Curiously, with KDE file transfer over sftp connections, I got only about 10MB/s.
It appears that I was a bit too blind expecting that gigabit upgrade would be as painless as 10Mbps and 100Mbps upgrades were years back. Apparently, the current PC hardware simply can't deliver gigabit. The integrated "gigabit" network cards apparently use PCI bus, which has theoretical maximum of one gigabit (32 bits * 33 MHz). But that's only in one direction, while gigabit ethernet is usually Full Duplex, so it would require two gigabits of bus.
I found out that my new "gigabit" 500GB Buffalo LinkStation was not able to provide more than one tenth of the gigabit, about 10MB/s with Samba from Linux. With FTP, I was able to get enormous 15MB/s. With Windows XP, the access may have been a bit faster, though I did not measure that more accurately, because Windows doesn't report transfer speed when copying files. Between two Linux PCs, I got a maximum of 35MB/s with scp. Curiously, with KDE file transfer over sftp connections, I got only about 10MB/s.
It appears that I was a bit too blind expecting that gigabit upgrade would be as painless as 10Mbps and 100Mbps upgrades were years back. Apparently, the current PC hardware simply can't deliver gigabit. The integrated "gigabit" network cards apparently use PCI bus, which has theoretical maximum of one gigabit (32 bits * 33 MHz). But that's only in one direction, while gigabit ethernet is usually Full Duplex, so it would require two gigabits of bus.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Blog created
Ok, here it goes. I've been planning to put up a blog or ages, but haven't gotten myself to do it. One reason has been the lack of a proper software. My intention has been to put the log in my home pages, but it would require a lot of technical solutions for which I don't have the time for now.
It will be interesting to see how Blogger fits to my needs. I write in two languages and it could be that this is not suitable for that. I also write about many different topics, and would like to separate these topics from each other, while keeping some connections.
So, here it is and I'll think about the technical solutions again later in the future.
It will be interesting to see how Blogger fits to my needs. I write in two languages and it could be that this is not suitable for that. I also write about many different topics, and would like to separate these topics from each other, while keeping some connections.
So, here it is and I'll think about the technical solutions again later in the future.
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