I have a home network that consists of 4 XP Pro w/Service Pack 2 machines. 2 Desktops and 2 laptops. 3 machines are connected with wireless (802.11B) cards and one is connected to the Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless router via the built in 4 port switch. Every computer has identical network configurations:
Client for Microsoft Networks
File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks
QoS Packet Scheduler
NetBEUI Protocol
Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
(Ethernet one is set to 100TX full duplex and wireless cards are set to 11 mbps)
Every computer has the microsoft firewall enabled.
I also have reduced the QoS Packet Scheduler Bandwidth to zero (turning it off) on all pcs.

I tend to transfer mainly between the 2 desktops, with most files on the Ethernet connected desktop being transferred to the desktop with a SMC wireless card. I tend to get about 30-40 % network utilization according to windows task manager on the pc receiving the transfer and only about 4% from the pc sending the files. It takes about 20-30 min for a 200 megabyte file. Shouldn’t it be faster than that? And what can I do to speed up file transfers?

Everything else is fine, speed is great as far as internet is concerned and browsing files from other computers is quick.

Thanks in advance.

with 11mb connection it seems about right. It doesnt matter how fast the one connected to the port as your bottleneck are the slower wireless connections. Sounds like you are averaging about 10meg per min.

On your wired desktop do "not" hardcode your nics to 100/full , set the nic as auto . I don't know about linksys but most low end routers do not allow you to hardcode the router port speed , it only allows auto so if you hardcode the pc nic to 100/full you are going to have a speed duplex mismatch which will cause slow speeds and errors . If you feel you must hardcode the nic then set it as 100/half because the router can sense speed ok as auto but it cannot sense duplex unless the pc nic is set as auto and will default to half duplex .

Ok I set it back to auto and it is not any faster...I am curious as to if my speed is really on par with average speeds? I would think that you could get speeds at least 1 meg per second. I know you will never get 11 megs per second, but not this slow right?

Remember speed is megabits per second not megabytes per second. You also lose some for overhead.

I ran a test a few months ago on my network. Here is what I found:

Test was performed by measuring the time it took to copy a 28 mb file from my server in the basement to other computers in the house using a variety of network connections. All Wireless connections indicated excellent signal strength.

28mb file

4 sec Hardwired 10/100
80 sec Wireless B
47 sec Wireless G (Router in Mixed mode)
36 sec Wireless G (Router set to G only)

On my wireless B system a 200mb file would take about 10 minutes.

Keep in mind that as the signal strength drops off so does the speed. So if you are getting a Good or Fair signal than your 20-30 minutes makes sense.

I would upgrade to newer/faster wireless if you want to improve performance. Work on your signal strength, sometimes moving access point just a few feet can make all the difference. Or try some of the new antennas to improve signal.

Why don't you go over to broadband reports and runn their speed and tweak tests and see what is actually happening this will give you the download speeds over the network . go to
http://www.broadbandreports.com/tools

Also, if you don't absolutey need Netbeui, take that out as it adds some overhead and can slow things dwon.

I'm a fan of Netbeui, but you have to be aware of the overhead it imposes.

Larry

I have similar problem in this situation. I use netgear wireless router 54 MBps and 2 computers, on my laptop is build in wireless card and it's 54(G) MBps and on the other PC has wireless USB also 54(G) Mbps. When I send a file 80 MB, it takes about 12-18 minutes, (Which shouldn't take so long).

I think the problem is using a wireless router.
Wireless Router is a device for sharing the internet as it is broadcasting. (But its not recommended for ethernet).

So, I am trying to find out wether there exist ethernet on wireless, like SWITCH wired, so in order to have fast speed on transefering files which I think is sometimes annoying waiting half an our for a 50 MB file.