Setup a new domain, 10-15kbps slow file transfer

Jesusfrk611

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I bought a used Dell PowerEdge T300 Quad Xeon w/ 8GB RAM and a PowerEdge SC430 P4 2GB RAM to setup a home domain for myself. Previously I was using my old gaming desktop computer with a C2D and 3GB RAM on Windows 7 Pro. I was running that doing file sharing for 2 separate drives as well as running backups of one of those drives and running a time-lapse security webcam. It was a tad but slow, but it worked for what I needed it to do and file transfers had a reasonable speed over the network.

I installed Server 2012 on the T300 and Server 2008 on the SC430. The T300 got the job of Active Directory and DNS as well as file sharing for my data drive and backups for that drive. The SC430 was setup mainly for my media files to stream across the network as I have been doing in the past with my old setup. No backups or anything else.

I spent most of my day setting this all up and went ahead and reinstalled Windows on all my clients (HTPC, desktop, and laptop). All was seeming to go perfectly. Then I go to copy files from the data drive to my HTPC over the network. About 250MB worth of pictures. It took nearly 3 hours at 10-15kbps. Meanwhile I was streaming a video file from the media drive on the other server to the HTPC and it streamed perfectly.

Tested copying files from the data drive to all my other computers. Same deal. Tried making a share on the C drive, same slow file transfer. Did some research and people said updated drivers fixed their slow speeds. Chipset and NIC drivers updated to no avail. It should be noted that the entire server just feels pretty sluggish for the specs it has.

It has two NIC ports that I setup as bridged together connected to a 5 port SOHO Cisco switch. I have a larger switch on order as all 5 ports are being used on the current one and I have another 5 port switch daisy chained off that one to connect the SC430. The router is a cheap Linksys wireless-N. Connected to that is the HTPC, blu-ray player, and wireless to the laptop, then a cable run to the Cisco switch which has 2 ports for the T300, 1 port for the desktop, and 1 port for the next switch that connects the SC430.

Got any ideas? I'd just move the drives over to the SC430, but it doesn't have any more drive bays and I wanted a dedicated media streaming server since I access those files all the time, but I don't get to my data files that often. Is running a Domain controller with file sharing a bad idea? Being that I'm the only user (along with an Administrator and Guest account) I didn't really figure it would be a large issue and it's not like the T300 isn't speced to handle it.

Only other idea I have is maybe it needs a BIOS flash?
 
Disabling the firewall didn't work either.

But I just now removed the bridge on the NICs and it suddenly works fine. The same 230MB of pictures took 45 seconds to copy.

Any idea why bridged connections would slow it down? I've bridged connections in the past with Windows XP and it worked fine on my old desktop.

FYI, the switch is a 10/100 so the theoretical max speed would be 200Mbps with the bridged connection.
 
My only guess with the bridge is bad drivers. Is there another version you can try (hopefully newer, but older if you must)?
 
It's got the newest one on the Dell website from what I could see unless there's a specific driver for a bridge. I'll check again later.
 
It's got the newest one on the Dell website from what I could see unless there's a specific driver for a bridge. I'll check again later.

Usually, there isn't. for grins, I'd try an older driver just to see if that's any better. Also, if the NICs are intel-made odds are you can find newer, better drivers on intel's site.
 
It's hard to find older drivers usually. But it's a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit 5722. Checked the Broadcom website and the driver was slightly newer and actually for Server 2012. So I installed that. Still no go. Oh well. For now it works with one port. Since I'm the only one that uses it normally it's not a big deal. I may try and figure it out one of these days. For now I just want to get the rest of the domain setup.
 
Ok, stupid question, how do you have this hooked up to the rest of the network? Is it into a switch (or worse, hub), or are both plugs directly into a router?
 
Since I don't think I'll have time to check in on this at work tomorrow here's what I'm thinking as a follow-up to my previous post:

I'm thinking that both NICs are connected to a switch or a hub (i'm just going to say switch from now on to be lazy). because both NICs are given the same IP address the switch is freaking out and has no clue which of the two NICs to send packets to so it sends to both. This would cause collisions or one NIC to send data back to the switch to be resent to the proper NIC. Think of plugging a 5-port switch into a router, with 2 cables running to/from the router - I'm picturing the same effect here if the switch is not smart enough to route properly.

Plugging directly into a router should eliminate this if that is truly the cause. and so long as you don't mind going without internet for a few minutes, easy enough to test out.
 
DOH! I should really re-read threads before posting and after drinking... I see you've already mentioned that it's connected to a switch.

Now a cisco-brand switch would surprise me if it wasn't smart enough to work this out but would it be possible to try to swap things around and connect both ports on the server to the router and move the switches around?
 
Never a hub! haha Yeah, I only use switches.

This is the current switch. Cisco SD205 5 port. Picked it up for $5 brand new in box from Goodwill. :D http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/swi...ck_start/guide/SD205_208_216_QuickStartv1.pdf

This is the switch I will be getting in by Thursday. Netgear JFS516 16 port. Netgear JFS516 16 Port 10 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet Switch 0606449022810 | eBay

This is the router. Linksys WRT120N-RM. Linksys WRT120N-RM 802.11b/g/n Wireless Home Router up to 150Mbps/ 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Port x4 - Newegg.com

And my other 5 port switch. Linksys EZXS55W. EZXS55W Support | EtherFast® 10/100 5-port Auto Sensing Switch

I was having problems with the Linksys switch where it would choose at random one port to not work if all 5 ports were plugged in. But I had this switch connected to my old bridged connection once upon a time.

The router isn't at a prime location for constant server connection, but I can definitely move the server and test it out at some point. I've been disconnecting and restarting the server a lot lately so I'm not too worried about a short loss in internet being I'm the only one using it anyway. I might swap out switches as well to see if it's a switch issue.
 
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