Home Network File Transfer Speeds

Here is my current setup. I have a new PC with and Intel Quad Core Q6600 loaded with windows XP in my office and my old computer is an AMD 3700+ with Windows XP MCE 2005. Both machines have onbard Gigabyte Lan and are connected to a D-Link router which has 100 MBPS ports. Cables are Cat5E and are relatively short (~75 feet).

When I try transfer files betweeen the two machines I am getting about 11% netorwork utilization on the windows task manager.

My questions are as follows:

1. Does 11% network utilization mean that my files transfer rate is 0.11*100MBPS?

2. Is this all I can expect to get out of this setup? If not how do I optimize?

3. Would a router with Gigabyte ports provide a signicant 2-3X improvement in transfer speeds?

PS - CPU usage is not approaching max during the transfer and I realize that most files transfer spees are limited by hard drive speeds but both hard drives are 7200rpm SATA drives so I would think they should be faster than this.

 

As a first off, transfer a respectably large file and measure the time taken.

Then try the same thing with two large files going each way at the same time.

Post your results .

 

Depening on the router you should expect a noticable speedup by using a gigbot rated router. I have a gigbit router with four machines on a gigbit network, and have a noticeble difference in file transfer speed.

 

May be this can Help, http://www.ezlan.net/net_speed.html

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