I have recently purchased a new Network Hub from a Computer Fair. The Asian documentation that comes with it (1 A4 page) declares that with duplexing turned on, the speeds can be effectively 20Mb/s and 200Mb/s.

The network runs happily at 100Mb/s. (No apparent improvement over 10Mb/s [file, printer internet sharing, network games etc]).

I have attempted to set the NIC's to 100Mb/s full duplex but WinXP Pro tells me that the connection speed is 100Mb/s.

Is 200Mb/s achievable or is this just advertising hype? Note, the documentation with the hub has told me this so I assume this does not refer to speeds over a crossover cable.

Just tweaking the system.

TzeDragon

Re: 10/100 Duplex 20/200?

Hi TzeDragon

You are displaying Human nature at its best, bravo to you.

In that I mean you say that 10 is not much slower than 100, but given that if 200 was possible you think you must need it just because 200 is a bigger number than 100 which is bigger than 10, why not get a motherboard with 1000 built in and a 1000 hub and all will be sweet?

Set XP to Auto speed and leave it alone.

Re: 10/100 Duplex 20/200?

Full duplex mode does not double the speed of data transfer in one direction. It just allows you to be transferring in both directions at once at full speed at the same time.

So if your network cards are running at 100 Mb/s you can be doing 100 Mb/s transfers in both directions between two PCs at the same time for a total combined transfer rate of 200 Mb/s. A situation where you would want and need to do that would be extremely unusual on a home LAN with only a couple of PCs. Just like, as you've found, on a home LAN its pretty hard to measure any difference between 10 and 100 Mb/s. And for the same reason wireless connections are good enough for most people even though they're a lot slower than wired LANs and are NOT full duplex.

Full duplex mode on a LAN requires a "switch" rather than a "hub". They both work differently internally. It would take a long explanation to explain it. In the early days only big companies with lots of PCs and big budgets could afford switches. These days they've gotten so cheap that pretty much everything, even when its called a hub is really a switch.

Re: 10/100 Duplex 20/200?

I have noticed an improvement with the 100Mb/s LAN.

I was able to view a DVD movie from the HDD of one machine on another networked machine. I don't think that this would have been possible at 10Mb/s.

I did this by sharing a folder on the Host machine and using Power DVD on a Client to play this movie "from the HDD". Some stuttering was evident but if other network traffic is minimised then the stuttering disappears.

Trevor.