I am trying to figure out what is the weak link on my home network. I have a gigabit switch and gigabit pci cards on computers 1 and 2, using cat5e cable to connect them. I also have 1GB ramdrives (L:) on each computer. When transferring a 185MB file, here are the transfer times I am getting: 1\C to 2\C = 7.5 seconds (writing from the C drive of computer 1 onto the C drive of computer 2) 2\C to 1\C = 4.5 seconds (reading from the C drive of computer 2 into the C drive of computer 1) 1\L to 2\L = 7.5 seconds (writing from the L drive of computer 1 onto the L drive of computer 2) 2\L to 1\L = 3.5 seconds (reading from the L drive of computer 2 into the L drive of computer 1) 1\L to 1\L = 0.5 seconds (writing from the L drive of computer 1 onto the L drive of computer 1) So you see I am getting about 350mbps best case going from PC to PC. That did not surprise me, however I was expecting the ramdrives to get up closer to 1gbps over the network (note that the 0.5 seconds ramdrive-to-ramdrive within one PC, not over the network, reflects about 2.6 gbps) So the question is: why am I getting 3.5 and 7.5 seconds when going from ramdrive to ramdrive over the network?

Network overhead, backplane limits, network adapter overhead and normal irq waits. You will NEVER get 1g. At best you might get close to 70% if you had a very high end system that didn't run windows. To see the limits use perfmon. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

This is true: "Network overhead, backplane limits, network adapter overhead and normal irq waits. You will NEVER get 1g. Normally you should get 70% or so." But I am getting half of that.

Start by setting up perfmon. See sites that discuss how to use the counters to show a true picture. It isn't easy to show exactly on perfmon, you have to understand the basics of the system to discover the counter results. I suspect you will see your system at it's limits. See also servers by top brand companies such as Sun, HP and IBM. See why they can claim such high numbers. Your home system can not compete with the enterprise systems. Those systems have been built from the ground up to transfer data. You pay for that speed too. Those systems might get close to the 1G on a good test day. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

Cat5e is sufficient for Gbit networking, but shielded cat6 is the best. Why not try getting a couple decent cat6 cables, connect them and see if it improves. I bet it does. J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m