Help! Painfully slow transfer speeds to WHS 2011

[dbocce3]

Hi everyone. Once again I find myself begging for your brilliance. 

I have recently built a home server using WHS 2011. I started a transfer of 5 gigs worth of movies onto the server from a laptop before I left for work at 6:45 am. When I got home that day at 7:10 pm it still had over HALF to go! (I am using the progress bar as my measuring stick) I measured my transfer rate and it is less than 1Mb!!!

Each client is connecting to the server wirelessly through a wireless router, and uses the WHS 2011 Launchpad application to access shared folders. The server is connected to the wireless router via an ethernet cable so I decided to connect my laptop to the router directly and it was still below 1Mb. I did an internet speed test for the server using speedtest.net and got an 18.3Mb download rate.

What is wrong? Do I need to turn something off/on at the server or the client? Having painfully slow transfer rates is killing me and does not bode well for my future goal of streaming movies. Thank you again for all of your help! Feel free to ask any questions you want and I will do my best to answer them ASAP. I would put in screen shots but I have no clue how to do it in these posts.

Here are the technical details of my set-up.

Server Specs:

CPU – Intel i3-2100t

MoBo – Intel DH61BEB3 (this has Gig LAN)

HDD – Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s  (This HDD is for movies only. I have a separate drive for the OS)

Client 1:

Laptop – Asus eee PC 1005 HA w/ 802.11g

Client 2:

Laptop – HP dv7 core i7 w/802.11g

Router:

Linksys WRT54G v.6. Latest firmware. This is not a gig switch.

 

 

[Aaron Ledger]

Those are certainly some pathetic speeds. I easily hit 800 Mbps+ on WHS 2011 with essentially nothing other than a default config, consumer-grade GigE switches and Intel NICs.

First step: Update ALL of your drivers to the latest including BIOS. Use the manufacturer drivers and not those from Windows Update. Do this on both client and server.

Second Step: Try a transfer bypassing your Linksys. Verify you can get a decent transfer speed directly connected.

Third Step: Add the Linksys back and try again. Honestly, it is worth buying a GigE switch for the type of transfers you are doing. I have had good luck with this very reasonably priced D-Link switch. Wireless file transfers are going to be slow no matter what. If you are intent on doing them, consider upgrading to a Wireless-N solution.

[dbocce3]

[quote=Aaron Ledger]

 

Second Step: Try a transfer bypassing your Linksys. Verify you can get a decent transfer speed directly connected.

 

[/quote]

 

Aaron, a question.

 

When you say bypass the Linksys, do you mean connecting the server to a client via an ethernet cable?

 

 

[Aaron Ledger]

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

[dbocce3]

[quote=Aaron Ledger]

Those are certainly some pathetic speeds. I easily hit 800 Mbps+ on WHS 2011 with essentially nothing other than a default config, consumer-grade GigE switches and Intel NICs.

First step: Update ALL of your drivers to the latest including BIOS. Use the manufacturer drivers and not those from Windows Update. Do this on both client and server.

Second Step: Try a transfer bypassing your Linksys. Verify you can get a decent transfer speed directly connected.

Third Step: Add the Linksys back and try again. Honestly, it is worth buying a GigE switch for the type of transfers you are doing. I have had good luck with this very reasonably priced D-Link switch. Wireless file transfers are going to be slow no matter what. If you are intent on doing them, consider upgrading to a Wireless-N solution.

[/quote]

 

Aaron,

I updated all drivers and picked up a Netgear GS108 switch. Now the problem I am having is that the server can’t access the internet. Everything else that is plugged into the switch (including wireless router) can access the internet. This means that I can’t connect to the server from any clients and the ‘Launchpad’ can’t sign in. I restarted the server and the switch and have had no luck.

 

Any ideas of why this is happening now?

[Aaron Ledger]

That is odd. Is the switch port indicating a good link with the server? Have you tried a different switch port and a different cable? Can you log into your router and see if your server is assigned an IP address (assuming your router is also acting as a DHCP server)?

[Author]

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