Hi we have 7 clients and 1 server running win2000 server the server has a dual processors P3 1GHZ,1GB RAM and 3 SCSI HDD when i try to copy files from the clients to the server or the other way round i get about 4mb the Maximum is 5mb per a second even on the fastest client i get same speed *All computers are connected on 100mb hub *The distance been all the computers is less than 15 meters *the data that i tried to copy from the server is located on Stripe Volume (2 HDDs as 1 drive) and this should improve writing performance is the speed iam getting ok? what is the maximum can you get from a network running on 100mb hub+NIC? what do i need to get a better performance in terms of copying? if the drive that content the data is compressed will it slow the copying speed? Thanx 4 UR Help Saleh

Last question first: compression does slow reading as well as writing. Network speed: keep in mind that a 100 mbit hub actually has a theoretical maximum speed of 100/8 = 12.5 megabytes/sec. One megabyte is actually 8 megabits, and they measure hard drive space and memory with megabytes, and network speed in bits. So if you're getting 5 megabytes/sec, that's almost 50% of the theoretical maximum (which can never actually be reached) and that's pretty darn good. I'd be happy with that. You might be able to get it going a little faster by uncompressing your data, but it really doesn't sound like that's necessary. You're getting good-average performance from your network, probably because of your short cable distance, your 100mbit hub. Afterthought: using a switch instead of a hub would reduce collisions to almost 0 and might speed it up a little, but it doesn't really sound like that's necessary because you're getting good speed and you only have 7 clients. At my high school we run 30-computer labs off one 100mbit hub and everything runs fine.

Hub = shared bandwidth, collisions = slow network Switch = point to point dedicated bandwidth, few if any collisions = fast network Even though you run a small network a switch may still help out a bit. It would be more noticable as your network traffic increases from multiple computers. Brand/type of NICs can make a small but measurable difference too as well as high quality cabling. If you really need a lot of bandwidth between computers then you may want to look into gigabit, if you have enough money for the investment.