burakkucat,

Yep, it's Pressac filtered faceplates that I use - usually from Amazon, the last one cost about 15 quid post free.

I've never tested the AB adsl connections off the back of the faceplate, although the filtered voice extension off the back of the plate is fine (however I don't know if the bell wire works - never connected it.)

Do sometimes get a "tinkle" on the phone connected to the front of the faceplate which is probably (?) caused by the cheap DECT phone on the end of the filtered voice extension.

Edit: seems like the best analogue extension setup for adsl and voice, if using a single cat5e cable, would be based on this http://www.clarity.it/acatalog/adsl_extensions.html using "DUAL: 1 x RJ45(ADSL/Data) & 1 x BT socket" and hardwiring to the back of a Pressac faceplate at the BT master (this would also allow a phone to be connected to the front of the filtered faceplate at the BT master without the need for a dongle filter/splitter.)

Edited by 4M2 (Sat 08-Oct-11 12:44:05)

prizx,

I'm giving a TP-LINK TL-SD1005D version 4.0 five port gigabit switch a try. Haven't got the gigabit PCI card for the XP machine yet but with the switch connected up to the LAN the XP and Win7 machines are having no problems communicating, although, of course, limited to 100Mbps. Just hope the PCI gigabit card doesn't muck things up after I've fitted it to the XP machine...will use a direct connection to the router, without the switch on the LAN, to test it initially.

4M2.

4M2, if it's the SG1005D that looks suitable and uncomplicated at least on paper,

Also, if you check the link speed reported on the network adapter status, the Win 7 box should already be showing 1G (or 1000M) - even though the remaining devices on the switch are still 100M.

On the XP box a reminder to unplug the cable from the 100M adapter when you connect up the new gigabit card so the network does not get confused.

In the old days a particular port on the switch would be designated the "uplink" port which would go to the next switch or router, the rest of the ports would be for devices. These days it is more common with switches like yours that all ports can take on either role.

I would also consider something based on the use of this, for example, at the extension location.

I have the classic faceplate filter at the NTE5/A and the above at the extension location.

Yes, from your link that's the same one.

Didn't check the link speed on the Win7 machine when I had the switch connected earlier, just played a 80Mbps video which was fine and a 120Mbps video stuttered a bit. Will check the status next time I connect the switch to the LAN though.

I'll disable the 100M LAN adaptor from the XP bios also before I boot with the new card installed...

burakkucat,

Yes, that's the same as I was talking about - without a cat5e cable, and the faceplate looks just like the pressacs https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pressac-NTE5-compatible-fil... that I use

In reply to a post by 4M2:

I'll disable the 100M LAN adaptor from the XP bios also before I boot with the new card installed...

That'll work too, but by default it's generally enough to unplug the cable; there may be a future use for the 100M adapter, just that they are not both connected to the same network at the same time.

prizx,

Gigabit is all setup on the LAN, fitted the gigabit PCI card to the XP machine today (status of the adapters on both the XP and Win7 machine show a speed of 1Gbs.) However there is not a dramatic improvement in speed: 150Mbps 1920x1080 25p CineForm v6 AVI video files are playable, without any stutter, over the LAN and the transfer speed of a 200MB file from the Win7 machine to the XP machine was about 15MB/s.

Those speeds are quite adequate for my needs though

4M2

Edit: did another transfer using the same 200MB file from Win7 to XP and got 30MB/s - probably Kaspersky IS wasn't quite "in gear" for the first test.

Edited by 4M2 (Wed 12-Oct-11 19:41:38)

Sounds ok-ish in as far as it exceeds 100Mbps,

Once you go to gigabit ethernet, the next limitations in throughput can be
- the slower of the two hard disks (when copying files) or the source drive (when playing back from a remote file)
- I/O (if the OS or drivers cannot offload processing of network packets from the CPU to this model of network card).

Even so I would have expected transfers of between 50MB/s and 100MB/s, assuming the files are copied to/from an internal hard disk rather than a USB external drive.

With Task Manager open on the slower machine (I'll presume the XP one) you may be able to see if CPU usage is high during just file copying (with nothing much else going on).

And if you know make and model of the network card there may be settings to adjust in its Device Manager properties (such as TCP offload).

If the other machine wasn't XP I might have suggested playing with Jumbo Frames (the switch supports it), but I'd be concerned about affecting its communication with the internet.

Edit: aha software anti-virus and firewalls - I'd not though of that.

If you want to do temporary tests you can create one folder on each machine that is excluded from real-time scanning and transfer the files between these two folders.

Or you could try making an exception from real-time scanning for the media file type you are using (e.g. avi).

If the anti-virus services are listed in Task Manager's processes you may see spikes in those processes when it is checking a large file.

Edit 2: when you copy the same file repeatedly if your machines have enough RAM the file at the source is cached in RAM which means it's less about hard disk read speed.

Edited by prlzx (Wed 12-Oct-11 20:04:24)

What I have noticed with the new XP gigabit card is this:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\me>ping bbc.co.uk

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data

Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=162ms TTL=249
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=249
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=249
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=249

Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 162ms, Average = 62ms

C:\Documents and Settings\me>

I don't know whether it is significant or not but with the old onboard card the first packet would have a round trip time of ~30ms. With this new card the first round trip can vary between ~40ms and, as in the above example, up to 162ms.

Yes "source is cached in RAM" is what I call buffering, but I rebooted the machines before the second test to be certain that there was nothing in memory. Transfers are being done between SATA internal drives. Will sort the Kaspersky thing out when I do some more tests tomorrow (Thursday.)