Mac Gigabit Ethernet Cards Network Performance

I now have a 1.8ghz CoreDuo MacMini and 2.0ghz MacBook and both have gigabit Ethernet cards in them, based on the Marvell Yukon chipset i believe.
I was wondering upto what speeds people have driven these ethernet cards?
I'm doing some testing using iperf version 2.0.4 but I can't seem to get any more than around 30MB/sec out of the cards.
Is this their limit? Have you managed to get better out of them? If so, how?
Synology have just brought out a NAS box (DS209), that reads and writes at around 60MB/sec, but pretty pointless unless your ethernet card is upto the same speeds.

If your notation is technically correct, you are saying you are getting 30 megabytes per second as your tested speed. That would translate to 240 megabits per second, which is above the old 100 megabits per second limitation. If this is all accurate, then the next question is what cabling and other equipment are you using to connect the two? If the cabling is not Cat6 (category 6) you may not be able to achieve optimal transfer speeds. If you are using a hub, switch, or router which is not gigabit rated, you would have limitations there.

Similar Messages

G5 Can't See Gigabit Ethernet Card

Some months back, I installed a gigabit ethernet card into my G5. It worked fine for a few months, then stopped working with a message: The cable for PCI Ethernet Slot 3, Port 2 is not plugged in. I wasn't working on the project that required that connection, so I just let it go. Now I need to connect to a different gigabit switch. I installed a new D-Link card into the same slot as before - same result. I moved the D-Link card to a different slot - and got the same error - still referring to Slot 3. Just for kicks, I installed the old card back into slot 2 (the one above the video card). Same error - and no mention of finding two cards or of anything in the other slots. It seems as if somehow all of the PCI slots are being ignored.
Running the System Profiler, I get a "No Information Found" for PCI Cards. None of the lights on either ethernet card come on. Any ideas? Everything else on the machine seems to be working correctly - the built-in ethernet is fine. There are a lot of drives connected to the system (4 on the FireWire 800, 1 on FW 400, 4 on USB). Is there some way to force a re-scan of the PCI bus? or turn it on?
Thanks!!
G5 2 X 2 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thomas -
Yes - I tried swapping slots. A gigabit card worked fine in slot 3 for several months. It stopped working - I figured it was the card that was th eproblem. I have since replaced the card, and then moved the new one to a different slot. The Network control panel still reports a card in slot 3, even though there is nothing in slot 3. The new card is in slot 4 (and just for kicks the old card is in slot 2). Neither of these is recognized by the the System Profiler or the network control panel.

Trying to figure out if I have a Gigabit Ethernet card

I'm trying to figure out if I have a gigabit ethernet card - currently, it's operating at 10x slower but I was told that sometimes it can be switched to Gigabit in the settings.
If not, what kind of card should I get?
Thanks!

If yours is a Mac Pro 65lb tower, it has two Ethernet ports, each of which can run at up to Gigabit speeds.
The equipment you connect to must also be capable of Gigabit speeds, but if you have a separate Router and Switch, only the Switch needs Gigabit capability.
The cables you use must have Eight conductors and Eight gold contacts present.

PCI Gigabit Ethernet Cards

Anyone have experience with PCI gigabit ethernet cards for use with Linux?
What I am looking for is a good one to go in a firewall box (P3 450 MHz) that won't take too much cpu to run it. A good 10/100 ethernet card that uses the tulip driver will saturate the net with very little cpu usage. The $10 TrendNet 10/100/1000 that I have tried saturates the cpu at only 5 MB per sec transfer.

Is there something wrong with the built-in interface
or do you want to trunk/bond interfaces or route
between interfaces?
Just experimenting…
The interface that Apple had in G4 Xserves (Broadcomm
chipset) 64 bit PCI would perhaps be a good buy if
you can find it (available as spare part?).
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/osx_networkcards.html
Thanks a lot for the link and the Broadcomm chipset hint.
Meanwhile, I found that the Realtek website features a driver download for Mac OS X 10.4 and Ethernet cards with the 8169S-32 chipset (the one featured by the Digicom card tested).
I think I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

Wrt310n gigabit ethernet 20% network utilization?

hi there,
I am transfering a large multi-gigabyte file over the gigabit ethernet of the router, two computers, which both register as 1 gbps in the network window of the Task Manager and I see the network utilization is only about 20%.
Should this network utilization not be higher (these are the only two computers that are transferring any significant data.
thx,
Cos

As long as you have Internet Connection up and running you should not worry about the Network Utilization...
You should use CAT 6e cabling on a Gigabit connection...

Incompatibilities between Gigabit Ethernet PCI cards and Power Mac G5?

Hi,
we recently bought a Digicom PCI LAN GIGA32 Ethernet card to upgrade our Power Mac G5 1.8GHz server. The OS on the G5 is Mac OS X Server 10.4.8 (8L127).
The issue is simple: the PCI card is recognized by the system (it appears in System Profiler and as a new port in System Preference's Network pane) but Mac OS X cannot properly use it. We tried to connect the card to a Gigabit switch but nothing happened: no led denoting the connection speed turned on on the switch and the Network Status view in the System Preference's Network pane still show the red light with the "No cable connected" message.
We noticed this message in system.log:
jedi kernel[0]: AppleRTL8169Ethernet: phyWaitForAutoNegotiation TIMEOUT
So we tried to manually set the Ethernet speed for the card and indeed it reacted, but we managed to have it working only at 10 Mbps (10baseTX).
It seems that AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext [1] is used by Mac OS X to control Ethernet cards featuring the Realtek 8169 chipset but it cannot properly communicate with Digicom's card.
The weird thing is that we tried the same card on a Power Mac G4 and it worked flawlessy. Maybe the issue depens on the PCI-X slots available on the Power Mac G5?
Are there any other report of incompatibilites between Ethernet PCI cards with Realtek chipsets and Power Mac G5?
BTW, we noted that the card's vendor doesn't certify the card for Macintosh systems but we didn't manage to find a PCI Gigabit Ethernet card certified to work with Mac OS X and Power Mac G5 hardware. Could you point me to some PCI Gigabit Ethernet cards proven to work with a Power Mac G5 machine?
[1] file://localhost/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/Plug Ins/AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext/

Is there something wrong with the built-in interface
or do you want to trunk/bond interfaces or route
between interfaces?
Just experimenting…
The interface that Apple had in G4 Xserves (Broadcomm
chipset) 64 bit PCI would perhaps be a good buy if
you can find it (available as spare part?).
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/osx_networkcards.html
Thanks a lot for the link and the Broadcomm chipset hint.
Meanwhile, I found that the Realtek website features a driver download for Mac OS X 10.4 and Ethernet cards with the 8169S-32 chipset (the one featured by the Digicom card tested).
I think I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

Mac Pros and 10 Gigabit Ethernet

Is it possible to get 10 Gigabit Ethernet cards for Mac Pros? And, if so, would they make a huge difference, or are there bottlenecks elsewhere in the Mac Pro's architecture that make it pointless?
Also, can anyone recommend a 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch?

10GBASE-T
10GBASE-T, or IEEE 802.3an-2006, is a standard released in 2006 to provide 10 gigabit/second connections over conventional unshielded or shielded twisted pair cables, over distances up to 100 m.[2] As of 2007, products remain scarce, but new silicon is expected to make 10GBASE-T switches available in 2008 at a price of less than $500 per port.
[edit]Connectors
10GBASE-T uses 650 MHz versions of the venerable IEC 60603-7 connectors (a.k.a. RJ-45) already widely used with Ethernet.
[edit]Cables
10GBASE-T will work up to 55 metres (180 ft) with existing Category 6 cabling. In order to allow deployment at the usual 100 metres (328 ft), the standard uses a new partitioned augmented Category 6 or "6a" cable specification, designed to reduce crosstalk between UTP cables (formally known as "alien crosstalk"), which, as of August 2007 is still in draft status.
I'd say anything over $100 per port is *Horrendously Expensive*

Gigabit ethernet + TC doesn't mean gigabit transfer rates to the TC drive..

Alright.... I've spent a ton of time trying to figure this out (probably more than I should have) and I thought I'd post my findings so that either a) I'll save someone else time out there or b) someone can tell me I'm a complete moron
So I had an airport extreme. I replaced it with a Time Capsule. I have a Windows (boooo) PC connecting directly to my TC using a gigabit ethernet card (which I bought specifically connect it to the TC) so (I thought) I could enjoy gigabit transfer speeds to the internal hard drive from the wired PC. I had some fun plans of shoving my itunes directory on the TC and letting appletv sync (yes through my pc) and keeping lots of videos there, etc. Who cares - it'd be at gigabit speeds! But, in reality, things didn't quite work that way (though my itunes directory does still live on my TC...for now).
Well, I had a semi-unique situation to do some pretty massive testing because I have 2 gigabit network cards, 1 100mb network card, and a wireless-n network card and two internal hard drives - both very fast. I also tried Cat 5, Cat 5e, and a Cat 6 cable.
And here's what I (think I) figured out:
The hard drive in TC can not achieve gigabit transfer speeds. Your transfer rates will be limited by the IO to the hard drive. In fact, it can't even come close.
Using my "fastest" setup - so Cat 6, fastest internal drive, gigabit ethernet, and transferring a file exactly 1 gig in size I was able to have a sustained transfer rate of 140 megabit per second - that's 17.4 MB/s for folks not wanting to do the math (that's reading FROM the TC. Writing TO the TC dropped the speed down to 106 megabit/second or 13.35 MB/s). Going to a 5e cable knocked that down to 130 megabit a second. Putting in a Cat 5 cable knocked me down to 110 megabit a second. Switching between my two gigabit network cards did nothing. Switching my cards between two computers did nothing.
Now, just changing the above setup to use my 100Mb network card resulted in these results: 67 megabit read (8.4MB/s) and 65 megabit write (8MB/s)...
And using wireless N, I got about 10MB/s up and down.
And just as a final test, connecting my two computers together using the 2 gigabit network cards through the TC, I was able to achieve standard gigabit speeds.
SO what does this all mean?
I think the IO to the hard drive in the TC can only read at about 140 megabit/s and write at about 110 megabit/s. I'm not sure if it's the HD itself or how it's connecting to the TC - but that's why I'm not aware of anyone getting faster transfer rates to the drive in the TC (maybe you guys are?). The gigabit ports themselves are fine - and if you're doing anything from one gigabit port to another gigabit port you'll be fine.
So stop beating yourself up trying to find some elusive XP specific issue with gigabit transfer rates (though vista had a problem - shocker), or that you must have a defective gigabit card (which is why I have two cards now instead of one :)), or that your cable must be bad ("maybe my cat 5e isn't good enough?")... it's just this drive ... or how the drive is connecting to the network - can't handle the gigabit speeds.
Unless someone else out there has another explanation? Do these speeds mesh with what you're seeing in "optimal" situations? Or maybe there's just a throttle switch for goobers like me using Windows instead of MacOS!

Hi,
the interfaces available today which connect your drives integrated electronics to your computer can handle that speeds. but the drive itself is limited by the mechanical things going on in there
You can get such transfer speeds if the data you request is in the cache of the drives internal electronics for example. Some drives have 8 MB of cache memory. So if you request to read or write less than 8 mb and (in the read case) you are lucky enough to have those few megabytes cached then you may get that performance
Regards,
somi

Xserve G5 Network Performance Questions.

Hello,
I have the latest 2.3Ghz Xserve G5 and was wondering what the optimal configuration would be for the best network performance. The unit seems to come with a couple of GB Ethernet interfaces but would a Fibre connection improve bandwidth at all? Currently this unit has direct access to a layer3 managed switch but is GB Ethernet more limiting than a fibre connection into the same switch and is a Fibre network connection possible on this unit?

Are you talking gigabit ethernet over fiber vs. gigabit ethernet over copper? Or Fiber Channel?
There's no significant difference between gigabit ethernet over fiber vs. over copper. There are some minor issues (such a a lower propagation delay in fiber vs. copper) but over short distances it's not relevant.
There are Fiber Channel cards available, but they're usually used for connectivity to storage systems (arrays, backup devices, etc.), not host-to-host connectivity.
Attaching a fiber channel storage array (such as the XServe RAID woul dhave a trickle-down effect on your network (there would be less overhead reading and writing data to disk therefore data can be pushed or pulled from the network more quickly), but it's not going to be a huge difference.
For maximum impact you could consider either trunking (combining multiple ethernet ports into a larger, virtual port) or moving to 10GbE (10 gigabit ethernet), although that will require new switches as well.
You might want to check out Small Tree, they're well versed in high performance networking and sell a range of multi-port gigabit ethernet cards as well as 10GbE solutions.

What file transfer speeds are possible over Gigabit Ethernet - Hatter?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to consider this.
Our still photgraphic studio has a range of MACs all connected via a gigabit D-Link switch to a series of Buffalo NAS raids. Wiring is CAT5e, all devices have gigabit ethernet cards and the link lights on the switch suggest that all devices are connected at that speed.
We currently get file transfer rates of between 5 and 12 MB/s depending on network traffic.
We would like to upgrade our NAS to a NAS/SAN, preferably using the existing wiring (and avoid the expense of Fibrenet). 50 or 60MB/s would be great if possible.
Any ideas for a suitable archtecture and Hardware would be gratefully received. Cable lengths are a maximum of 30 metres.
Paul

I'm getting sustained speeds of 90-100 megabytes/second on a transfer across GigE from one mac to another, both working on high-capacity SATA drives.
It drops to ~65 megabytes per second if the source drive is my 2TB Firewire 800 external.
both rates are right on the real-world maximum for GigE and FW800 respectively, which is a great sign that nothing else is bottlenecking the transfer.
My experience with NAS boxes has been disappointing in the past, with transfer rates of 5-35 MB/sec - painfully slow for large files, which destroys the purpose of NAS for me, which is reasonably high-speed off-computer storage.
I'm MUCH happier, and didn't have to pay very much to set up a Mac with 4 SATA drives onboard, acting as a file server... I'm actually getting files FASTER than I am from a FW800 drive directly attached now.

Dual Channel Gigabit Ethernet on MBP!?

Hi all,
I have a MBP with the ExpressCard/34 slot.
I am wondering, if I get an ExpressCard/34 to Gigabit Ethernet Card can I create a dual channel setup using the MBP's existing Gigabit port and the port on the Express/34?
If this was possible do I also need XSAN?
Cheers

Ned the point of the benchmark is (at least with the Core Duo) that the FSB limits memory access to 5.33 GB/s. Single Channel PC2 5300 667MHz RAM has a bandwidth of 5.33 GB/s. So what does doubling bandwidth via dual-channel to 10.66 GB/s do for you if the FSB is limiting it to 5.33 GB/s anyway. You can saturate the bus twice as fast? It is still saturated.
I am not speakng of saturating RAM, but rather saturating the FSB which is where the bottleneck occurs.
That is what the test is designed to show.
That is why I say that the benefits of 3GB outweigh the benefits of dual-channel. At least in terms of the Core Duo what are you really gaining from the dual-channel? In theory..nothing...in testing...nothing.
Nothing will slow down performance like paging out to a slow hard drive however.
edit
Not trying to be argumentative on this, I just have not seen any evidence of dual-channel having any signficant benefit to performance that would warrant being afraid to give it up for 3GB single-channel.
From Barefeats:
DO MATCHING PAIRS OF MEMORY HELP?
Though we ran the tests above using matching 1GB SODIMMs in both MacBook Pros (for a total of 2GB), we also ran the same tests in the 15" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with one 1GB SODIMM and one 2GB SODIMM for a total of 3GB of memory. We wanted to see if non-matched modules would cause the MacBook to slow down due to the loss of interleaving.
The answer is "no, it didn't slow down." In some cases we saw a gain in speed. An example is Aperture where the "lift and stamp" ran 11% faster with 3GB of RAM. But that's probably due to the fact that Aperture + OS X = more than 2GB of total memory usage.

Gigabit ehternet card in real time PXI chassis

I was reading document # DZ52103_US about general real-time
information. This document states that plug in ethernet, serial, and
GPIB cards are not supported for real-time I/O operations. I want to
use a plug in PXI gigabit ethernet card to transfer data from my real
time PXI chassis to a host laptop computer. Can this be done?

Currently, the only PXI ethernet controllers supported in LabVIEW Real-Time are the PXI-8211 and the PXI-8212. These are not Gigabit cards. This information is documented in the following link and will be updated as ethernet device support in LabVIEW Real-Time changes.
If you have any further questions, please post a reply.
Regards,
Kristi H
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

PRESTO GIGABIT PRO Ethernet Card not detected in Mac OS 10.5.8

Hello,
I am an IT Technician who is troubleshooting an issue with the network card on a PowerMac G5 tower. I have installed the PRESTO GIGABIT PRO Ethernet card (which states that it is compatible with Power Mac G5 (with PCI or PCI-x slots). After I install it, and plug an ethernet cable into the ethernet port on the card, it appears as if it is getting network activity since the LED lights begin to blink on the card. However, when I boot the G5 with Leopard 10.5.8, it does not see the network card in the system profiler under PCI cards. The only PCI card detected is a Broadcom 5702 in PCI slot 3. I have tried seating the card in different PCI slots but I still get the same result. Do you all have any ideas what may be causing this issue and a possible remedy for it? Thanks for any assistance that you can provide.

Hi Bruce, and a warm welcome to the forums!
I can't find the PCI card, just the PCIe card...
http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=164&expand=a3_a2b405&action=b490#b490
http://www.amazon.com/Presto-Gigabit-Ethernet-PCIe-Card/dp/B0017K6BR8
But on a hunch, System Preferences>Network, unlock the Lock if need be, see if you get New Port Detected, or click the little + icon and see if you can add Ethernet.
If it works & that is the Interface used for Internet, click on the little Gear icon>Set Service Order, drag Ethernet to the top.

Networking a G5 dual 2.5ghz and a Powerbook G4/550 (Gigabit Ethernet)

I have two macs. A PowerMac G5 dual 2.5ghz with 2 gigs ram. My other one is a Powerbook G4/550 (Gigabit Ethernet)(with PCMCIA Slot). I have the G5 at my desk and the Powerbook upstairs (about 100 feet by walking 40 feet as the crow flies. I have a 115 year old house with unGodly thick mortar walls that make any networking a challenge so I do not want to guess. I want the best networking solution afordability wise and efficiency wise. Mobility is not that big of a deal and speed of data transfer is paramount. I also do not want slow download or transfer speeds on either machine. I don't transfer mush from BIG MAC to small mac but the internet thing (SPEED) is important. I do movie and music editing on both and maintain a web site daily with tons of each on it. Should I wire the thing to avoid slow wireless speeds and what all do I need. I know my laptop (Original Airport) speed is 11mbs. but I can't seem to find any comparison to ethernet wired speeds. I have DSL and no airport card and don't mind wiring if the speed is lots better. Can someone straighten me out or point me to the andwers? Please? indigorob

If speed is important then you want to run ethernet cable between the computers. The Mac's ethernet (10/100/1000) connector is capable of 10 megabits/second, 100 megabits/second, and 1000 megabits/second (Gigabit Ethernet). The original airport is about 11 megabits/second. The Airport Extreme/Express is 54 megabits/second.
You can easily get at least 100 megabits/second by running wired Ethernet.

Performa 6360 extrange behavior and Ethernet card

I replaced in a performa 6360 the original Quantum 1.2 G with the original Maxtor 6g that came with the B&W G3 and upgraded RAM with a 63Mb replacing one of the 16Mb module. I have now a 104Mb built-in memory.
I've installed Mac OS 9.1 (int. English). Good.
So, sometimes the computer don't restart, the monitor goes, but the computer seems to be sleeping. In APS the Farallon ethernet card appears (Card name pci1011,14) but no led activity, no network. In tcp/ip no ethernet option.
I've tried to reset the pram (holding down optioncommand+PR) but the computer shuts down.
Any help or comments or questions will be aprecciated.
Thank you
Mac OS X (10.4.3)

That card (and most non-Apple cards) require drivers. Farallon drivers are currently on this page, which may require you to log in to download:
Farallon drivers at proxim.com
You will also need the card's part number.

Mac Gigabit Ethernet Cards Network Performance

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