Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => Networking => Topic started by: kitz on July 12, 2012, 07:46:37 PM
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Since using the TG582n I noticed that things were sluggish and seemed slow almost like DNS issues and sometimes pages just timed out. However I thought I would look at things properly when I got the new PC.
But now things are even worse. I just cant seem to get anything much above 500kbps, so I think theres 2 different issues here. 1) the general DNS type sluggishness. 2). I now have have a major problem with the new PC.
These are the things Ive tried so far.
Network:-
Different DNS servers.
Static/Dynamic Network IP.
Swapped Network Cables.
Installed new cable between router and phone socket.
Speedtest via ipad (wireless) 16.5Mbps down, 2Mbps up
Speedtest on an old XP laptop, using the same network cable and same port on the switch shows 18Mbps down 2.2Mbps up
Speedtest on Win7 machine, using the same network cable and same port on switch <500kbps down 2Mbps up
PC:-
Disabled AV and Firewalls.
Updated drivers
Latest versions of Java/Flash etc
Tried Dynamic and Static IP. Tried different DNS
Run tests in Safemode with networking, still getting slow speeds <512Kbps
Transferring over the network is also slow <512kbps
Network Adapter:-
Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit (NDIS 6.20)
Disabled:-
Flow Control
Interupt Moderation
Jumbo FRames
C:\Users\kitz>ipconfig /all
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : i7
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Atheros AR8151 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Con
troller (NDIS 6.20)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 50-E5-49-EE-D9-4E
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::b0b5:e305:8c17:ab5b%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 240182601
DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-17-84-77-EE-50-E5-49-EE-D9-4E
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
87.194.255.154
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
Tunnel adapter isatap.{7C99724B-CE6E-4C19-AE8F-282853257B28}:
Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:5ef5:79fb:202d:1779:b196:8ca7(Pref
erred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::202d:1779:b196:8ca7%15(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled
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Not sure what's at the other end of the wire but, as an experiment, would there be any point forcing the adapter to 100mbps, to stop it negotiating gigabit?
Reason I ask is symptoms are not that far removed from when my own gigabit router was sick, the error rates with gigabit were basically so phenomenal that every packet was needing to retransmitted, maybe several times. And each one was waiting for the acknowledgement timeout, leading to the kind of speeds you describe.
Forcing 100mbps restored tolerable behaviour until I was able to repair the ethernet switch (faulty capacitors).
Not sure how you check ethernet error counters with Windows?
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Boot from a Linux live CD, maybe? Just to rule out faulty hardware in the PC? Perhaps a NIC driver problem?
I had (an unrelated) DNS problem. Isn't it typical that when something goes wrong, so often it is simultaneous to some change you made, just to throw you off the scent!
Being incapable of remembering IP addresses, Google's nameserver ( 8.8.8.8 ) always comes in handy. It has worked flawlessly for years. Yet in recent days it ground to a halt, with resolution now taking 10 seconds or more. That had me shaking all the cables!
EDIT: (viz SLM's post).. I never noticed before that ipconfig in Windows is missing all ethernet error counters that Linux has in ifconfig:
$ /sbin/ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 14:fe:b5:a2:42:e7
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::16fe:b5ff:fea2:42e7/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1199358 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:873174 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1396641616 (1.3 GiB) TX bytes:145754215 (139.0 MiB)
Interrupt:41 Base address:0x6000
cheers, a
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>> Yet in recent days it ground to a halt, with resolution now taking 10 seconds or more.
hmmm that could be the reason why DNS type issues, Ive been switching between Be's and Googles, and they are both as bad as each other.
Ive since also disabled Windows autotuning - which took me up to a heady 1Mbps!
@ 7LM
Thankyou !!!! forcing my NIC to 100Mbps immediately resulted in the following.
(https://forum.kitz.co.uk/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.speedtest.net%2Fresult%2F2060209568.png&hash=43914316b46f08d4c43d9ee94ec11d3f8905080e) (http://www.speedtest.net)
So unsure where to go next.. because that means my gigabit network is now out of the question.. ???
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In XP/Vista/7 you can use Performance Monitor to see all sorts of network stats in real time.
Open Performance Monitor (it's under Administrative tools) and click the "+" icon near the top, you can then choose "network interface" and under there, you'll find various sub items like bytes/sec , packets received errors etc etc.
It does seem like there's something funny with the NIC, either software or hardware.
Were the other computers configured for Jumbo Frames as well? Might try turning that off, for internet related activity I don't think that's any help at all.
Ian
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>>> And each one was waiting for the acknowledgement timeout,
hmmm thats just made me think of something else.. goes to play for a few mins.
>>> Open Performance Monitor (it's under Administrative tools) and click the "+" icon near the top, you can then choose "network interface" and under there, you'll find various sub items like bytes/sec , packets received errors etc etc.
Thank you will be back when Ive had a play.
>>> Were the other computers configured for Jumbo Frames as well
Id already turned it off as I dont seem to see any benefits from it.
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EDIT: (viz SLM's post).. I never noticed before that ipconfig in Windows is missing all ethernet error counters that Linux has in ifconfig:
I was also surprised by that, realised it myself quite recently. Always thought it was there, so either it's been removed at some point, or my memory is playing tricks and I'm confusing it with a VAX running VMS :)
There is a registry edit that adds a simple error count underneath the bytes sent/received display when you view the status of a network connection, but having just tried this, it doesn't seem to work for Win7, though I do use it on XP.
Brief description of it here :
http://www.pcwintech.com/show-lan-errors (http://www.pcwintech.com/show-lan-errors)
(despite that page claiming it's ok for Win7, it doesn't seem to have an effect on my Win7 system, but does what it claims to on XP)
Ian
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Took the NIC back to gigabit and immediately speeds dropped to 1Mbps - which is where I was at when Id disabled Windows auto-tuning.
Ive enabled ECN, which is supposed to help with congestion and retransmission. but that doesnt make any difference.
Not quite sure what Im doing with the performance monitor yet. I opened it up and its just showing a garbled mess of about 50 lines.. guess I need to tweak it
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Quite apart from the fact that my own gigabit got sick for a while, I have found some inconsistencies in gigabit connectivity.
Specifically, the Mac Mini will negotiate Gigabit with some of the ports on my network switch, dropping back to 100mbps on others. The windows PC, as well as other half's work lappie, are happy with gigabit on all ports, and will achieve transfer speeds to prove it, well over 300mbps sustained for disk to disk transfer.
My XP box has a clever trick, if you can find it in device manager, and that is the 'cable test' function. It worked well, and not only told me I'd messed up but accurately estimated the distance to a cable fault I'd created when wiring the house a few years ago. Can't remember what the chip in that box is, but it was a neat trick.
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Not quite sure what Im doing with the performance monitor yet. I opened it up and its just showing a garbled mess of about 50 lines.. guess I need to tweak it
Sounds like you've added all of the network interface items, of which there are a lot. You can remove them with the "-" button, then carefully select only the network interface items you want to watch, such as transmit errors, receive errors etc.
Perfmon is a bit odd to get used to, but can be very powerful, and there's an awful lot it can monitor, and tell you a lot if you understand it. (which I don't pretend to do!)
Ian
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If all else fails, you could get a PCI ethernet card such as http://www.ebuyer.com/232654-edimax-gigabit-ethernet-pci-adapter-en-9235tx-32
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>>> device manager, and that is the 'cable test' function
Unfortunately I dont seem to be able to find that.
>> If all else fails, you could get a PCI ethernet card such
Thanks eric... annoying as it is on a new system, I think that may be what I have to do. However Im not home much over the next week to take delivery of anything so unless I can get something cheap at PEECEE world then it may have to wait. You dont expect to see problems like this on a new build so not happy.
>> Sounds like you've added all of the network interface items
After playing with it for a while I realised it had added the network interfaces Id asked, but by default it had added in every single detail about my CPU.. There was nearly a 100 of them to delete. No wonder it looked such a garbled mess.
Anyhow fired it up whilst performing a speedtest.. and these are the results... not really sure how to interpret them, other than to say theres a lot of dropped packets.
On the graph the large M shape is during the upstream part of the test.
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There is a registry edit that adds a simple error count underneath the bytes sent/received display when you view the status of a network connection, but having just tried this, it doesn't seem to work for Win7, though I do use it on XP.
Brief description of it here :
http://www.pcwintech.com/show-lan-errors (http://www.pcwintech.com/show-lan-errors)
(despite that page claiming it's ok for Win7, it doesn't seem to have an effect on my Win7 system, but does what it claims to on XP)
Ian
According to this (http://www.technochat.info/2010/07/lan-packet-data-connection-error.html), "64-bit system, it is DWORD (32-bit) value."
Which appears to work for my 64 bit system.
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Somethings b0rked somewhere and Ive no idea..
This PC yet again has lost connection with anything else on the network. It doesnt see the lappy if attached nor does it see the NAS box.. Yet other machines can see it.
Oh well.. I messed most of last night with the network, and Ive been messing with this again tonight. I was hoping to get it fixed today, but I have hospital/medical appts tomorrow and am out all day.. and then not here this weekend. ( ^-^ kitteh :D) so I guess it will have to wait a bit longer.
Thank you everyone for your input so far, if anyone else has any other ideas please do say and I'll pick up when I can.
Just a final thought, could it be anything to do with either my switch, which Im sure was fine before - or at least seemed to be with the old PC.. and could my router have anything to do with it?
Bearing in mind its been since I connected the technicolor that I noticed the sluggishness - but that could be google/Be DNS.. Im unfortunately out of time now to do any more testing tonight.
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Sounds like a dodgy switch to me, I had a Netgear GigE switch go in much the same way.
Go get iperf and test between the XP lappie and the Win7 box. The default settings on iperf won't get you much over 200Mbps on a GigE network (you need to tweak to max it) but they should be consistent on all ports of the switch.
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I reallise you'd probably not attempt to fix the switch yourself Kitz, but you could always take the lid off and look for bulgeing capacitors, which is perhaps the most likely cause of failure.
Absence of bulgeing caps proves nothing, but presence would increase the confidence level that the switch is the problem.
But I'm finding it hard to think of a bulletproof test that would prove with certainty that a new switch would fix everything in the world. :(
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That does seem a lot of errors!
I mis-read your earlier post, in that you'd disabled Jumbo Frames (I thought you had them enabled), but I notice you have disabled flow control (or flow control is disabled by default). What happens if you enable this? Wonder if packets are being dropped because something can't handle the rate? Try switching flow control on, and see what happens.
Ian
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Drivers for the Ethernet adaptor : Did Windows find these for you and install, or did you download from the Atheros site?
This seems to be the download page. http://www.atheros.com/corporate/content.php?nav1=146 (http://www.atheros.com/corporate/content.php?nav1=146)
Under "AR813X AR815X Family Drivers" choose "WIN_AR813X_AR815X_Windows WHQL Driver V2.1.0.5"
I'm still thinking here that there's something up with the install of the network card, but, as has been suggested it could also be the switch. I assume you've not got another gigabit device to try?
Here's what I'd do next :
Download that driver, save it onto the errant machine, ready to install.
Shut down, remove the network card from the computer, boot it up as normal again.
Find Command Prompt in start menu, right click on it and "run as administrator"
type the following :
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
start devmgmt.msc
Device manager now starts.
Click "view" and tick "show hidden devices"
You can now see all devices that have ever been in the computer. Devices that are no longer there appear in a light grey.
Under network adaptors, find the ethernet controller, highlight it and click the "x uninstall" button at the top. If an option appears asking if you want to remove the driver as well, then do so.
Shut down, replace the network card, and reboot. When the card is detected, point it to your newly downloaded driver.
I always prefer a fresh install of a driver to an upgrade :D
Ian
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That does seem a lot of errors!
I mis-read your earlier post, in that you'd disabled Jumbo Frames (I thought you had them enabled), but I notice you have disabled flow control (or flow control is disabled by default). What happens if you enable this? Wonder if packets are being dropped because something can't handle the rate? Try switching flow control on, and see what happens.
Ian
Flow control relates to software control (cpu on motherboard) and should be disabled if the checksum offload is enabled (which it should be on anything made in the last 10 years).
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Thanks for the extra info guys.
At rizla... Actually my switch is a net gear one too. Thinking also how my st 585 failed because I couldn't pass any traffic on the wan, but that wouldn't connect anyhow via a direct cable either.
Unfortunately I can't do any more testing till next week, so will have another look then.
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Thanks for the extra info guys.
At rizla... Actually my switch is a net gear one too.
As was mine, model GS 608 iirc. Symptoms same ( lots of errors, dial-up throughput). If the similarities continue to component level then a consolation is that, if you know anybody who's handy with a soldering iron, repair is feasible and cheap. ;)
I probably have some suitable low ESR high temp caps wasting away in my components cupboard in fact. You'd be very welcome... :)
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Finally had some time today to mess with my own PC and look into this. Thanks guys for all the suggestions
1) Updated Atheros Drivers - Clean install to the Atheros Drivers as linked via Sheddyian. Couldnt physically remove the NIC as its onboard, but removed the device and drivers from within windows, reboot, search for new device, installed 2.0.15.16
Set to auto Negotiation:- Speed = <1Mbps
Set to 100Mbps Full Duplex:- Speed = 18Mbps
Directly connected to router:- speed = 18Mbps regardless of speed setting.
Unfortunately without some rejigging of network cable routing I cant connect to the NAS without using the netgear switch to test network speed and dont see the point atm since the router is only 10/100 anyhow.
2) Bought and installed new Intel Pro 1000T Desktop adapter. It works fine. ::)
No idea wth is up with the onboard Atheros adapter to cause the slow downs :/