Testing limits of home Ethernet wiring

[unmesh]

Someone on Reddit pointed me to a utility to tweak the network stack and I used it to tweak the parameters to "optimal"

TCP Optimizer

I get better results between two laptops though they do taper off as the test runs

iperf3 -c 192.168.2.200 -w 256K

Connecting to host 192.168.2.200, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.2.102 port 6080 connected to 192.168.2.200 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec   134 MBytes  1.13 Gbits/sec
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec   280 MBytes  2.35 Gbits/sec
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec   279 MBytes  2.34 Gbits/sec
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec   269 MBytes  2.25 Gbits/sec
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec   282 MBytes  2.36 Gbits/sec
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec   225 MBytes  1.89 Gbits/sec
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec   155 MBytes  1.30 Gbits/sec
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec   175 MBytes  1.47 Gbits/sec
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   210 MBytes  1.76 Gbits/sec
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec   211 MBytes  1.77 Gbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.17 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec                  sender
[  5]   0.00-10.03  sec  2.17 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

 

[John Davis]

Someone on Reddit pointed me to a utility to tweak the network stack and I used it to tweak the parameters to "optimal"

TCP Optimizer

I get better results between two laptops though they do taper off as the test runs

iperf3 -c 192.168.2.200 -w 256K

Connecting to host 192.168.2.200, port 5201
[  5] local 192.168.2.102 port 6080 connected to 192.168.2.200 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec   134 MBytes  1.13 Gbits/sec
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec   280 MBytes  2.35 Gbits/sec
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec   279 MBytes  2.34 Gbits/sec
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec   269 MBytes  2.25 Gbits/sec
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec   282 MBytes  2.36 Gbits/sec
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec   225 MBytes  1.89 Gbits/sec
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec   155 MBytes  1.30 Gbits/sec
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec   175 MBytes  1.47 Gbits/sec
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   210 MBytes  1.76 Gbits/sec
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec   211 MBytes  1.77 Gbits/sec
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  2.17 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec                  sender
[  5]   0.00-10.03  sec  2.17 GBytes  1.86 Gbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

that's still kind of odd - when I test I'm stable at 2.39gbits for the entire run (and I've run tests for over 60 minutes)

a 'tcp optimiser' shouldn't be needed - unless you've run something like that before which has already tinkered with the stack settings (and got things terribly wrong).

Don't suppose you've got clean install win10 box you can test on?

 

[unmesh]

I haven't done any stack tweaking before and the software let me save the state before the tweaks so I can go back. It also has a Windows Default setting that I could try, I suppose.

The closest to a clean install that I have is a Windows-to-go USB stick. Wouldn't I need two machines running clean installs or will a single machine running with both adapters suffice?

If the latter, maybe I can dig out a spare SSD and do a clean install on it.

 

[John Davis]

The closest to a clean install that I have is a Windows-to-go USB stick. Wouldn't I need two machines running clean installs or will a single machine running with both adapters suffice?

If the latter, maybe I can dig out a spare SSD and do a clean install on it.

single machine with both adaptors should work ( as long as the usb controller has enough bandwidth to the two ports in use).

I'd try booting the intended machine off a live ubuntu distro and testing both on that first to be sure the USB is up to it before going to the hassle of clean installing windows (and also to give you an extra data point)

 

[unmesh]

John,

I did a live boot and used iperf3 with the -B option but, unlike Windows, it seems to be bypassing the network interfaces to give me 34Gbps.

I finally figured out how to force the bits on the wire using network namespaces as suggested in the following link and confirmed that the USB hub is up to the task of giving me 2.35Gbps of throughput

https://serverfault.com/questions/127636/force-local-ip-traffic-to-an-external-interface

Need to do a new install of Windows 10 to a SSD and try that next.

 

[unmesh]

Windows-to-go stick showed the same performance as existing Windows on SSD.

I did a clean install of Windows on new SSD, plugged in one adapter and installed the driver (version 10.28) from the CD image that popped up as a letter drive. I then plugged in the other adapter, cabled them up, set up manual IP addresses and ran iperf3.

2.1Gbps!

I then installed the latest driver from the Realtek website (version 10.43) and was initially dismayed to get only 1.4Gbps. For some unknown reason, I unplugged and replugged the Ethernet cable and got 2.1Gbps again.

So not 2.35Gbps but much better than before.