How to double the speeds with two Ethernet cables?

[Razzee]

Hi.

 

I have a motherboard (Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H) with two Gigabit network cards connected to the PCI slots.

 

The cards:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

While it has two PCI-E ports, I can't use them since they are already populated (with a 4-port USB 3.0 card and a NVMe SSD).

 

Anyway, even if I could use them, it would not make any difference.

 

PCI slot: 533 MB/s

PCI-E (x1 2.0): 500 MB/s

 

So, in theory the PCI is better.

 

Since I have a 700 Mbps (download) / 70 Mbps (upload) connection, and I use this PC to move files between PCs, I want to get rid of the bottleneck.

 

For now, I connected two Gigabit Ethernet network cables between both Gigabit network cards and the switch (TP-Link TL-SG1005D).

 

I may be too delusional, but just setting up both connections with the same local IP didn't do the trick:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Before anyone asks, the built-in network port of this motherboard is Gigabit-compliant, but it is faulty. Therefore, I have to use external solutions.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Sjaakie]

That's a bit too much to ask from this hardware I'm afraid. You'd need to set up link aggregation at both sides, so the switch and the pc / network cards must support it.

[AbydosOne]

16 minutes ago, Razzee said:

PCI slot: 533 MB/s

16 minutes ago, Razzee said:

700 Mbps (download)

MB != Mb

 

A single card is already faster than your internet speed. 700Mbps is approx 75MBps.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, AbydosOne said:

MB != Mb

 

A single card is already faster than your internet speed.

yeah i was about to say..... their connection is slower than gigabit which most pcs have or exceed.

[Razzee]

16 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

MB != Mb

 

A single card is already faster than your internet speed. 700Mbps is approx 75MBps.

 

I know that MB/s is not the same as Mbps. I'm just saying that PCI has more bandwidth than a PCI-E slot (x1 2.0).

 

The issue is that the connection should exceed 500 Mbps, like my main PC does:

 

Spoiler

 

While 700 Mbps is not a lot more than 500 Mbps, I don't see why it is capped at 500 Mbps (62.5 MB/s), very distant from 533 MB/s.

 

I move files between PCs (videos, Steam library and other stuff) and all my equipment is Gigabit (double). This is not only affecting the download speeds.

 

17 minutes ago, Sjaakie said:

That's a bit too much to ask from this hardware I'm afraid. You'd need to set up link aggregation at both sides, so the switch and the pc / network cards must support it.

 

I see. Thanks, anyway!

 

Do you have any idea why this is happening, though? One card should be enough to exceed 500 Mbps.

[jaslion]

8 minutes ago, Razzee said:

 

I know that MB/s is not the same as Mbps. I'm just saying that PCI has more bandwidth than a PCI-E slot (x1 2.0).

 

The issue is that the connection should exceed 500 Mbps, like my main PC does:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

While 700 Mbps is not a lot more than 500 Mbps, I don't see why it is capped at 500 Mbps (62.5 MB/s), very distant from 533 MB/s.

 

I move files between PCs (videos, Steam library and other stuff) and all my equipment is Gigabit (double). This is not only affecting the download speeds.

 

 

I see. Thanks, anyway!

 

Do you have any idea why this is happening, though? One card should be enough to exceed 500 Mbps.

What cpu do you have in there? As well as storage

 

Legit if you cpu is too weak a speedtest can actually be slowed down.

[AbydosOne]

3 minutes ago, Razzee said:

I'm just saying that PCI has more bandwidth than a PCI-E slot (x1 2.0).

To be clear, you probably have a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI slot, not any of the faster variants (at least that was my experience from that era). Your 500Mbps limit seems suspiciously like a half-duplex link. PCI is a bad interface for high-speed transfers.

 

37 minutes ago, Razzee said:

I can't use them since they are already populated with a 4-port USB 3.0 card

https://www.amazon.com/XRIKUI-Ethernet-Expansion-Card，Express-Internal/dp/B0C77VQ5FL/?th=1

(just an idea)

[HanZie82]

Maybe also try another source for speedtest like Netflix's Fast.com or others.

[Needfuldoer]

51 minutes ago, Razzee said:

I know that MB/s is not the same as Mbps. I'm just saying that PCI has more bandwidth than a PCI-E slot (x1 2.0).

No it doesn't.

 

32-bit PCI is 133 MB/sec. I believe that's shared across all slots.

 

One PCIe Gen2 lane is 500 MB/sec.

 

Gigabit Ethernet is about 120 MB/sec.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

So, your post is different than your title.

 

Regarding what you ask in the OP: as others have told you, your internet connection is slower then 1Gb, so having multiple NICs won't do any the for you. Your only potential "problem" is getting all 700Mbps from one link. 

 

Regarding the title: you mostly don't. You can set up link aggregation if am only if you have avswitch/router that also supports it, and it will only work between those two devices. If you want a PC to PC link above 1Gbps, you'll need the other PC to alsp have two aggregated links (or a 2.5/5/10Gbps nic and a compatible switch/router). And if all those conditions are met, Windows will show you a 2Gbps connection... but it won't be true in practice. File transfers between computers will still only use one NIC at 1Gbps. In theory, with link aggregation you coukd get 2Gbps used if doing simultaneous operations (i.e., NOT one file transfer). I did this. It never happened. So, going through all the LACP trouble is not worth it, not for what your intended result is. 

What you can do is set up SMB multichannel and use SMB shares to transfer files between your PCs. It's easier, but it only applies to local PCs properly set up running Windows. Google SMB multichannel to see if you can manage that. Level1Techs has a tutorial for it. 

 

3 hours ago, Razzee said:

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may be too delusional, but just setting up both connections with the same local IP didn't do the trick:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

That's NOT how you do it. In fact, that may be causing additional troubles. If you set up link aggregation, you should not dry individual IPs. Instead, the resulting team will have a unique IP. If you do SMB multichannel, then each NIC should have its own IP. 

[Razzee]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

What cpu do you have in there? As well as storage

 

Legit if you cpu is too weak a speedtest can actually be slowed down.

 

It had a Pentium G2020. Despite being a Ivy Bridge processor, it lacked PCI-E 3.0 for example.

 

Now the "server" sports a Core i5-3550. Since I also use this PC for my second monitor, this upgrade improved the experience significantly.

 

2 hours ago, AbydosOne said:

To be clear, you probably have a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI slot, not any of the faster variants (at least that was my experience from that era). Your 500Mbps limit seems suspiciously like a half-duplex link. PCI is a bad interface for high-speed transfers.

 

https://www.amazon.com/XRIKUI-Ethernet-Expansion-Card，Express-Internal/dp/B0C77VQ5FL/?th=1

(just an idea)

 

Yeah, I checked the motherboard's manual and it states 33 MHz.

 

About the adapter, I didn't know that it existed! Too bad no one sells it in my country, only Chinese sellers (ex.: Shopee).

 

Now that you mentioned, the speeds I'm getting are interestingly half of the ideal (133 MB/s * 8 = 1064 / 2 = 532).

 

I checked the Device Manager and everything seems set up properly. Do I need a specific driver? 

 

45 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

So, your post is different than your title.

 

Regarding what you ask in the OP: as others have told you, your internet connection is slower then 1Gb, so having multiple NICs won't do any the for you. Your only potential "problem" is getting all 700Mbps from one link. 

 

Regarding the title: you mostly don't. You can set up link aggregation if am only if you have avswitch/router that also supports it, and it will only work between those two devices. If you want a PC to PC link above 1Gbps, you'll need the other PC to alsp have two aggregated links (or a 2.5/5/10Gbps nic and a compatible switch/router). And if all those conditions are met, Windows will show you a 2Gbps connection... but it won't be true in practice. File transfers between computers will still only use one NIC at 1Gbps. In theory, with link aggregation you coukd get 2Gbps used if doing simultaneous operations (i.e., NOT one rule transfer). I did this. It never happened. So, going through all the LACP trouble is not worth it, not for what your intended result is. 

What you can do is set up SMB multichannel and use SMB shares to transfer files between your PCs. It's easier, but it only applies to local PCs properly set up running Windows. Google SMB multichannel to see if you can manage that. Level1Techs has a tutorial for it. 

 

 

That's NOT how you do it. In fact, that may be causing additional troubles. If you set up link aggregation, you should not dry individual IPs. Instead, the resulting team will have a unique IP. If you do SMB multichannel, then each NIC should have its own IP. 

 

Seems like a lot of trouble to me. 

 

About the Internet connection, I also transfer files between PCs, so making use of Gigabit Ethernet is not limited to my download speeds only.

 

In the future, I plan on using this card on all my computers, to transfer files faster between them, besides making my computers "future-proof".

 

There are some Internet providers around here offering connections greater than 1 Gbps, and my cables are all Cat5e plus.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

40 minutes ago, Razzee said:

 

About the Internet connection, I also transfer files between PCs, so making use of Gigabit Ethernet is not limited to my download speeds only. 

As I said, those are different problems. In any case,  Speedtest only tells you the speed of your connection to the outside world, i.e., some server on the internet. It doesn't tell you the speed between your two PCs over LAN at all. You may be getting the full 1Gbps between your 2 PCs already as far as we know. And if that's the case, other than smb multichannel, that's a fast as it will get with your current hardware. 

 

(Also, don't expect insane speeds from faster NICs. At some point you get bottlenecked by drive speeds, the CPU's I/O capabilities, the type of files beibg transferred...) 

[Razzee]

3 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

32-bit PCI is 133 MB/sec. I believe that's shared across all slots.

 

Now that I think about it, this makes a lot of sense. But why no motherboard manufacturers specify this publicly? 

 

For example, there's always a reminder that the PCI-E x8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCI-E x16 slot.

 

Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 (Rev. 1.3) - "Specifications"

 

 

Below "PCI slots", there is nothing. 

 

Now, this is not the same motherboard I mentioned before, but I had to use it as an example instead of the B75.

 

If you visit the GA-B75M-D3H's page, there's also nothing below "PCI slots". Is it not important? It could piss off the wrong customer...

 

Of course, that's all a thing of the past, since no motherboard nowadays feature PCI slots.

 

In any case, I noticed that both Marvell's SATA ports share the bandwidth, despite the page saying nothing. You can read my thread here.

 

If all PCI slots share the same bandwidth, in the sense that using both halves the maximum I/O, would it not be specified on the page?

 

31 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

As I said, those are different problems. In any case,  Speedtest only tells you the speed of your connection to the outside world, i.e., some server on the internet. It doesn't tell you the speed between your two PCs over LAN at all. You may be getting the full 1Gbps between your 2 PCs already as far as we know. And if that's the case, other than smb multichannel, that's a fast as it will get with your current hardware. 

 

(Also, don't expect insane speeds from faster NICs. At some point you get bottlenecked by drive speeds, the CPU's I/O capabilities, the type of files beibg transferred...) 

 

I tested by moving a movie file, so it is a big file instead of several small files, and the speed seems bottlenecked as well:

 

 

70,8 MB/s is a number very close to half of 133 MB/s. So that's it, unfortunately.

 

Despite the motherboard having several expansion slots, it's just a marketing gimmick since they share the same bandwidth.

[Needfuldoer]

27 minutes ago, Razzee said:

Now that I think about it, this makes a lot of sense. But why no motherboard manufacturers specify this publicly? 

That's just how PCI has always worked. It's a standard from the early 90s.

 

It's also largely irrelevant on late-model boards that only have one PCI slot, which probably goes through some kind of PCIe bridge chip.

[Razzee]

1 hour ago, Needfuldoer said:

That's just how PCI has always worked. It's a standard from the early 90s.

 

It's also largely irrelevant on late-model boards that only have one PCI slot, which probably goes through some kind of PCIe bridge chip.

 

At least I learned something today: how to interprect this page of the manual.

 

 

I highly doubt that motherboards meant to be used in servers have this limitation, but who knows.

 

Is it safe to assume that the PCI-E x1 slots do not share the bandwidth? At least, they are depicted individually instead of bundled together.

 

[HanZie82]

All this is shared.
 

 

But i think the 1x denotes that all those things get their own PCIe lane.

So 1 lane per PCIe 1x slot
1 lane for LAN

1 lane for 2 SATA ports
and 1 lane for PCIe to PCI bridge
And then 2 PCI slots and the Firewire 1394a connections share that PCIe/PCI bridge. (thus that PCIe lane too)

 

 

Also this is just for the chipset, the connection method (and bandwidth) from chipset to CPU also matters.

[AbydosOne]

17 minutes ago, Razzee said:

At least I learned something today: how to interprect this page of the manual.

Underrated page when it's included... should be mandatory IMHO. My ASRock Rack X470D4U board has a very funky PCIe breakdown that makes it important that it's available, but I've seen other board where it's not and would clear up a lot of questions about SATA/M.2 assignments, etc.

[Blue4130]

5 hours ago, Razzee said:

I tested by moving a movie file, so it is a big file instead of several small files, and the speed seems bottlenecked as well:

 

 

70,8 MB/s is a number very close to half of 133 MB/s. So that's it, unfortunately.

 

Despite the motherboard having several expansion slots, it's just a marketing gimmick since they share the same bandwidth.

Maybe I missed it, but what are you copying from and to? Harddrives or ssd's? Specific models also.

[mariushm]

The motherboard has no native PCI.  PCI slots are created by that "PCIe to PCI" bridge chip, which talks to the system using a pci-e x1 lane and creates 2 PCI slots running at 33.3 Mhz , 32 bits  etc meaning all the PCI slots share a 133 MB/s bandwidth.

 

The firewire controller is also connected to the pcie to pci bridge chip, but if it's not used, it won't reserve bandwidth from that 133 MB/s

 

The 1 gbps connection of an ethernet card can do 1 gbps of transfer or 125 MB/s - but data is transferred in packets with headers and footers, so realistically if you are to transfer a file, you'd transfer around 118-120 MB of actual file contents per second.

 

A single pci-e 2.0 lane is good for 500 MB/s - realistically you're looking at around 470 MB/s due to arranging data in packets / frames with headers and checksums - the actual throughput is less.

 

Anyway as an answer to your first post , you can put both PCI cards into the slots, but they'll both fight for the 133 MB/s available on the PCI bus, even if the pcie to pci bridge is connected through a pci-e  lane that can do at least 250 MB/s (for pci-e 1.0)  so if you were to transfer data through both cards at the same time, you'd probably get around 50-60 MB/s through each - you won't get near 133 MB/s

 

If you want fast transfer between two computers, get a 10gbps or higher ethernet card and plug it in a pci-e x8 slot.

 

[Razzee]

23 hours ago, mariushm said:

If you want fast transfer between two computers, get a 10gbps or higher ethernet card and plug it in a pci-e x8 slot.

 

Being more realistic, which one of the following is better?

 

[1]

[2]

[AbydosOne]

3 minutes ago, Razzee said:

 

Being more realistic, which one of the following is better?

 

[1]

[2]

Based strictly on what info I can get from the URLs as Shopee won't let me see them without logging in, go with the Intel I225-v based one.

[mariushm]

Actually you'd probably be better off with Realtek chip ... if my memory is correct the I225v had a lot of bugs, it took several revisions to get rid of most bugs and I wouldn't be surprised if those boards are made with intel chips from the first generations that are dumped at basically pennies a piece.

[Alex Atkin UK]

42 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Actually you'd probably be better off with Realtek chip ... if my memory is correct the I225v had a lot of bugs, it took several revisions to get rid of most bugs and I wouldn't be surprised if those boards are made with intel chips from the first generations that are dumped at basically pennies a piece.

I've not personally had any problems with the B3 revision of the i225, was using one for months as I did have problems with the ASUS XG-C100C (Aquantia chip).

 

I'd definitely look specifically for a listing saying its using the B3 revision though, or go Realtek.  I do suspect they are dumping the old buggy versions right now as its suspicious you can't seem to find them selling the new i226 cards which solve all the problems.

[Razzee]

4 hours ago, AbydosOne said:

Based strictly on what info I can get from the URLs as Shopee won't let me see them without logging in, go with the Intel I225-v based one.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Razzee]

Hi.

 

I have until tomorrow to pay for the network cards. I applied a coupon, which "nullified" the taxes.

 

Are these cards good, or should I skip them and get a 10 Gbps (it's PCI-E x8 though) instead?

 

 

The value includes taxes, free shipping. I intend to keep two to myself and sell the other one.

 

Unfortunately, if you look for "model X issues", there is not a single model you cannot find a thread about.

 

I intend to make my PCs "future-proof". Also, I have an issue with the onboard NIC (RTL8111E). Basically, while I'm transferring files between PCs, it's impossible to use the network, even if the transfer speeds are lower than the controller capacities. I'm not sure if an offboard controller would help