Hi All.  I've hit my first glitch and would appreciate some help.  I'm building an unRAID server for my HTPC.  I'll try to be as complete as possible.  My system is as follows:

 

Visionman Acserva TSI 1NG700 server

Orion 585 Watt PSU

Asus P5N-MX Moto

4 SATA ports, 2 PCI slots, 1 PCIe 1x slot, 1 PCIe 16x slot on Moto

Pentium dual core E2180 CPU

2GB DDR2 RAM

10/100 built-in Nvidia LAN

Netgear GA311 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Adapter

1 2TB Hitachi HD

1 1.5TB Samsung HD

 

(I haven't added the parity drive yet.  I thought I'd copy over the bulk of my media first, since I heard the parity drive slows things down.)

 

 

I just added the gigabit ethernet card and my speeds haven't increased.  I'm copying from an external Seagate 1.5TB drive via USB 2.0 to my iMac which is hardwired thru ethernet to an Airport Base Station.  I have the unRAID tower hardwired also to the Airport Base Station via the new gigabit card.  I'm pretty sure the Airport and iMac are gigabit ethernet.  I have to check to make sure.

 

I don't know Linux, but I looked around the forum and found some stuff to try.  I did a ethtool eth0 and this came back:

 

Settings for eth0:

       Supported ports: [ TP MII ]

       Supported link modes:    10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                         100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                         1000baseT/Full

       Supports auto-negotiation: Yes

       Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full

                                        100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full

                                        1000baseT/Full

       Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes

       Speed: 100Mb/s

       Duplex: Full

       Port: MII

       PHYAD: 0

       Transceiver: internal

       Auto-negotiation: on

       Supports Wake-on: pumbg

       Wake-on: g

       Current message level: 0x00000033 (51)

       Link detected: yes

 

I also have the syslog which I have attached.  

 

I disabled the Nvidia onboard LAN and unRAID saw the new Ethernet card right away.  

 

I took a 100MB file and copied it back and forth.  I'm getting about 10MB/sec read and 8MB/sec write.  I think this is right for a 100Mb/s LAN, but not the gigabit.

 

I noticed that the ethtool returned a speed of 100Mb/s, so somewhere along the line, it's not stepping up to the 1000Mb/s, but I don't know why.

 

Probably a different issue, but I also noticed that when I first installed the card and started copying, it seemed to go in spurts, stopping completely for a second or two and then continuing and then slowing to a snail's pace.  But I was trying to copy over a huge 178GB iPhoto file.  I think that was causing the initial slowdown and spurts, any ideas on that?

 

THANKS!

syslog-2010-5-19-2351.txt

Having a quick google about Airport Base Station, bring up a new "Extreme" unit, that has Gigabit lan ports.

 

But,  Also found a wiki site that shows some older models didn't, only 100Mb ports.

 

Check this site, it lists model numbers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort#AirPort_Extreme_Base_Station

 

Hope this is of help

 

Rob

 

Oops, one more thing, your using Cat 5e or Cat 6 cabling for stable 1000Mb/s performance.

Bingo!  Damn!  That's what it is.  I have an older Airport Extreme Base Station.  I read somewhere in the FAQ that I can make a direct ethernet connection to the tower.  I'm going to try that.  THANKS!

If your transferring large chunks of data, it may be worthwhile considering picking up a gigabit hub, and connecting everything to that.  There's a great time difference when using 1000Mb/s than 100Mb/s.

 

Sorry for the bad news.

 

Cheers  Rob

 

Yeah, thanks Rob.  Wouldn't I need a new Gigabit router?, or would a switch do?  I think I need a router...

You could plug in your computers to the new Gigabit switch and then plug in your existing router to the new Gigabit switch.

So you're saying if I plug the unraid tower, my mac and the Airport Base Station 100/Mbs router into the gigabit switch, the mac and unraid can still talk to each other at gigabit speeds?  I thought it had to go through the Airport.

 

Oh, BTW, in the meantime while I'm figuring this all out, I made a direct ethernet connection between the unraid and the mac via the directions in the FAQ and I'm getting the gigabit speeds.  It's only temporary to get the bulk of the data over to the tower, but it's working!

So you're saying if I plug the unraid tower, my mac and the Airport Base Station 100/Mbs router into the gigabit switch, the mac and unraid can still talk to each other at gigabit speeds?  I thought it had to go through the Airport.

nope.  the DCHP of the router will assign all the computers on the network with IPs, but the switch will get traffic from one computer and send it directly to the target computer.  If you didn't care about talking to the outside world, you could ditch the router altogether.  The switch goes by MAC addresses.  I have all my computers fed into a $25 8 port DLink gigabit switch and can move data at over 100 Mbs between them even though my netgear router's wired ethernet ports are 100 Mbit.  Best $25 I ever spent on my netwo

Think of it like this:

 

You have an airport, which is really three separate devices in one package. The first is the router which connects your network to the internet. It has only two "ethernet ports" of which one goes to your LAN and one goes to your ISP.

 

You also have a wireless access point. It has one ethernet port, which connects to your LAN.

 

You then have a 6 port, 10/100 switch. 1 port goes to the router, 1 port goes to the access point, and 4 go to your LAN.

 

The only thing the router part of the airport does is take packets destined _outside_ your network and get them there. So adding another (faster) switch changes nothing at all, as far as the airport is concerned.

So you're saying if I plug the unraid tower, my mac and the Airport Base Station 100/Mbs router into the gigabit switch, the mac and unraid can still talk to each other at gigabit speeds?

Correct.

 

The only thing the router part of the airport does is take packets destined _outside_ your network and get them there. So adding another (faster) switch changes nothing at all, as far as the airport is concerned.

The Gigabit switch changes nothing about traffic with the outside world, but then such traffic doesn't go anywhere near 100MBit anyway. For traffic on the local LAN the Airport Base will have no say.  A Gigabit switch makes all the difference.  His Mac and his unRAID will talk at Gigabit speeds, provided their NICs are gigabit, and he uses good cables (CAT5e or CAT6).

 

Thanks for the education.  There's an Asus 8 port gigabit switch that's cheap and getting good reviews.  I'll probably pick that up.  I bought the keys last night because I'm ready to add a third data drive, so it's coming along nicely.