Low intranet transfer speeds between windows PCs using gigabit network

Hello everyone,

I decided to open this thread about a subject which has been discussed widely in different forums on the net, namely the extremely low transfer rates of data between PCs running Windows using a gigabit network, because I think to have observed something which - as far as I see - was never reported anywhere else until now.

So, this post is based on my report here, which i will now republish in a slightly modified way.

I see the same problems many others are reporting, i.e. low transfer rates between two windows PCs (7 <> 10 or 10<> 10) over a gigabit network, my transfer rates are never higher than 25MB/s and go down to a few MB/s in many cases.

However, I did carry out some test using the following software: Downloads | Totusoft

And the results are impressive!!! Testing the transfer of files of 500 MB and 2 GB in size I get up to 800+ Mbi/s transfer rates (in both direction and between all PCs), which is what I would expect from my pc/gigabit-network configuration.

So, if transfer rates up to 800 Mbi/s are possible (this corresponds to approx. 200 MB/s, if I'm not wrong), than the problem cannot be hardware-related but must lie in some windows-related stuff. I did not have this problem with my 3x win7 pc network, only when I installed win 10 on two of these PCs I started to get the limited rates).

For everyone observing the low transfer rates using the windows copy system, please try the SpeedTestSoft I shared above, run it more than one time to get some statistics and please report if you're observing the same stuff as I am.

So, question remains: what is the problem with windows which does not allow the high transfer speeds which are allowed on a hardware level?!

Cheers

The transfer rate will be limited by the storage location that the file is going to. What is the transfer rate to/from your hard drive?

Also, dare I say it, but besides what LCDR pointed out, I'd like to ask the obvious:

Ok, you installed a G router, possibly a G switch (I have both in my network, plus all my cabling is Cat6a (See below)), and zero transfer issues, I doubt it is the OS... but ...

Are the systems ALL using Gigabit capable networking adapters?

You can't expect that kind of transfer rate to begin with if one, or both adapters on the sending and receiving PC are not Gigabit rated as well.

Then it's a matter of mainboard HW - and how the HDD is connected, If SATA, what generation is the drive?

Just because you might have a SATA 6 g/b s rated board means that you'll get that rated speed, the drive would have to be at that rating as well.

Lastly, but less likely, you could have a crappy network cable - Cat5 / Cat5e variants are not rated for the higher speeds of today's rated Gigabit networks, Ensure you have Cat6 variant cables to get the most out of it.