I am kinds new to networking but i have managed to 2 comps networked. Ones running win98 se and uses and 10/100 ethernet adapter the other is on win xp home edition and has a 10/100 networked card. When i send files between them it runs very slowly 20 min for 100 mb. Xp says its connected at 100mb and the taskbar says its utilizing 1-4% of the network whens its actually less. The adpater is an smc 2202 connect on a usb and hte netowrk card (or adapter i guess) is part of the nforce on board stuff. How come its running so slow and how do i fix it?
Max USB throughput is 12Mbit/sec, or roughly 1.5MB/sec (and thats theoretical maximum, in reality you won't get that). Thats one reason for slowness. 20 minutes seems a little high still, however i think all your speed problems would be solved by spending around $45 on a pci network card to replace the USB adapter.
(edit: unless its USB 2, which is 450mbit/sec, so shouldn't be as much of a bottleneck, but i suspect it isn't the case)
yeah sorry about that sly. Was kinda tired when i posted it. I also have another question. If i want to share the internet connection will i need to have another netowrk card in the host or do i need a hub?
Quote from KILLER: yeah sorry about that sly. Was kinda tired when i posted it. I also have another question. If i want to share the internet connection will i need to have another netowrk card in the host or do i need a hub?
If you are using 10-Base-T wiring, you will need a hub or switch and straight-through cabling to link more than two machines.
For two machines, you only need a crossover cable. More than two needs hubs and straight-through cables.
Quote from KILLER: yeah sorry about that sly. Was kinda tired when i posted it. I also have another question. If i want to share the internet connection will i need to have another netowrk card in the host or do i need a hub?
Depends what your sharing champ...modem connection just make sure theres 1 nic in each machine, cause you get your internet through the modem. Otherwise if you've got cable or adsl then your main puter will need two nics, one for inet the other for your priv network.
If you are using a modem then 1 nic per PC but you will need to set up "Connection Sharing" in Win 2k or get some sort of gateway software - cant think of the name ... but a search on some freeware sites will turn up something
Now if you are using cable/adsl - they present as a RJ45 ethernet connection ....
Now I have ADSL and plug that connection into a small router which acts as the pppoe client and a firewall as well
On the other side of the router I have a switch and about 6 machines which can all share the one net connection
But routers switches cost money so ... if ya have the coin that is the best way to go if not then ...
One pc and 2 x nics will work but may be tricky to set up the cards and get it all working - win2k and NT, Linux etc will support 1 or more nics - never tried it with win 3.11,95 or 98 so depending on ya OS you may have some challenges ...
So in short ... it aint easy, it can be done , it ( typically ) costs money ...
its not really that hard....just read up on internet connection sharing if you run a windows os greater that win98SE. That should be all you need for both modem and cable/adsl connections.