auto-select

wang · 17th February 2002

i have a multi-homed win2k server running NAT, the card going out is a (built-in) intel pro100v, the card for the lan is a 3com 905b. my main workstation is win2k, and has a 3com 905b also.
both have latest drivers. there is also a winme machine with yet another 3com905 on it. all are connected to a netgear 10/100 hub(model#ds108). my question/issue is this; when i set the sever 3com card to 100full and the win2kpro 3com card to 100full file it takes about 5 minutes to xfer a 10meg file. if i set them both to auto then it takes about 2 seconds.

i know how to set set ports on a switch or router to 100full, but i have never heard of setting a port on a hub.
since it works fine with all parties set to auto there is not a problem. i am just curious as to why file xfer is slow when the cards are hard set to 100full.

any info would be much appreciated!!

wang · 19th February 2002

*living up to my beginner title*
i guess everyone knew this except me, but for anyone who may not have;
hubs are always half, whether they are 10Base or 100Base.

Newt · 21st February 2002

Wang - glad you caught that and no, you were for sure not the only one on here who didn't know that little tidbit. Most of your slow-down was time the devices were trying to negotiate a speed setting they could both agree on. I'm actually surprised it worked at all.

One other consideration to keep in mind in the hub vs switch thing.

Hub will normally share it's bandwidth equally with all devices active on it at a given time. So, with a 10 port 100Mbs hub, any device on the hub could get from 10Mbs to 100Mbs depending on other activity at the time. And as you said, half-duplex.

A switch should be able to deliver the full rated bandwidth to each device so a 10 port 100mbs switch can let all 10 devices operate at 100Mbs - and full duplex.

Switch is lots faster and these days the cost-per-port is about the same as with a hub.