Teamed gigabit adapters don't provide increased bandwidth? Help please.

[The Von Matrices]

Hi everyone. I have some computers with RAIDs in my network, and they always max out the 1-gigabit connection when transferring files between them. I have upgraded them all to dual-Marvell network adapters (two PCIe x1 Gigabit ethernet cards in each) and configured them to use static teaming through Marvell's network configuration utility. I also have configured my switch (a Dell Powerconnect 2824) to team the two ports connected to each computer.

The adapters all show in Windows that they are connected at 2 Gbit/s, which leads me to believe that I have set up everything correctly. However, when I transfer files from one RAID to another over the network, the connection stays pegged at exactly 50% (1 Gbit/s), and I am sure that the disks can transfer faster than that because the transfer rate never drops below this value.

This leads me to believe that there is some network configuration issue that I am missing. I am having trouble finding what is wrong, however, because it doesn't seem that network teaming is that common so I can't find a similar circumstance on the web that I can reference to troubleshoot the issue. I am looking to see if anyone has suggestions of what to check in my network to allow the transfers to occur at over 1Gbit/s.

Thanks for the help in advance.

[slyfox2151]

if you start two file transfers does it stay at 50% ?


sounds like its setup two split connections with the same IP address so when you transfer one file it will use one connection, and if you start a second file transfer at the same time it will use the other connection.

i could be wrong however.

[The Von Matrices]

I just tried that, transferring one file to one computer and another file to another computer; it still stays at 50%.

[Maban]

I'm interested in this also. I tried this a few days ago, PC to PC with Intel NICs on one and Marvell NICs on the other. No matter what settings I chose it would always only transfer up to gigabit even though they were teamed properly and showed 2Gb.

[Jizzler]

Fully utilizing a team comes from multiple clients, at least with the SMB-level hardware I've used. There very well could be higher-end equipment that does what we're after.

Back when I had a couple of servers with quad-port cards and 8-drive arrays, I could get 300MB/s+ with a handful of computers downloading from them. Their onboard NIC's could get about 80-90MB/s, while server to server was 116MB/s.

[Rhyseh]

Teaming the ports will not increase the speed of the connection, however the potential aggregate throughput is higher.

Link aggregation does not use the two 1Gbps pipes simultaneously. It will only use both pipes if you have multiple TCP connections. It's basically a form of load balancing where by if one link has high utilisation new traffic will be directed through the second link.

If you want a higher speed connection you would need to move to a 10 Gbps connection, which isn't really cost viable in a home situation.

IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation (LAG): what it is, and what it is not for anyone who wants to read a little more.