1) What firmware am i meant to be downloading - 1.02 from the UK Buffalo site or 1.06 from the USA site? and whats difference between them
2) Had my Linkstation connected to PC via a Zyxel 10/100 switch and got 10mb/sec transfer on a file - now have bought a Netgear Gigabit switch and speed is slower about 8mb/sec
Why is it slower on the new gigabit switch, (my pc contains a 'Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Controller') so i was expecting it to be transferring a lot faster not slower
it says in the linkstation web admin i'm on 1000 Mbps (Full Duplex) as opposed to 100 before
I'm puzzled
The FW version depends on where the unit was made/purchased.
Do you have Jumbo Frames on the TS enabled and/or your switch?
Have you tried a different cable or port?
My pc's network card says 1000 full duplex - my linkstation live says 1000 full duplex, i have tried the 4 different settings for ethernet frame size from default 1,518 up to 9,694 jumbo frames but the fastest speed seems to be the default setting, i'm wondering if its something i need to change on my NIC, linkstation or switch (though how i do that i don't know)
admittedly after a reboot i got up to 15mb/sec on transferring data to and from the drive, is this all i hope to achieve??
Couple of things to check/try:
First, confirm all Gb devices have jumbo frame support, e.g. I have seen some Gb switches advertise that they work with jumbo frames, so it follows that some may not. The manufacturer of your switch should have it in either its tech specs in the manual, or on their website. If no jumbo frame support then set all frame sizes to the 1500 mark or thereabouts on both LS & PC.
If everything can support jumbo frames, next step is adjusting jumbo frame size on your PCs network card. Open Device manager (Shortcut: windows key & pause/break key on xp, windows key & pause/break then device manager link on left, for Vista.
Open the 'network adapters' section, right click your GB ethernet adapter & choose 'properties' then go to 'advanced', you should be able to set your jumbo frame size there.
Incidentally, the jumbo frames selections on my Marvell chipset Gb LAN adapter are:
1514
4088
9014 bytes
BUT my LS-CHL only has choices of:
1518
4102
7422
9694 bytes
Therefore if I set Max jumbo frames on both PC & LS, I can send data from my PC to my LS & there will be no fragmented packets, but if I take data from LS > PC then packets will be fragmented (and thus slower) as the LS is sending packets to the PC that are oversized.
Regardless I found my best speeds were from setting the LS & PC to the 9000 range, although I suspect they would be better if I could align the PC & LS packet size so the packets are not fragmented.
Also, my last Gb ethernet adapter was an onboard nforce 4 based chipset, and in addition to jumbo frames I had an option to prioritise for CPU or Throughput, as I don't have this motherboard anymore I cannot remember the property name in advanced, but have a look through the options & if it is there set to Throughput, as I recall it always defaulted to CPU on install. It's on the same property page as the jumbo frames.
Also, for big network file transfers be it from PC > PC or PC > LS, where the PC is running Vista, use a 3rd party file copy program to send it rather than Vista. I use teracopy which is safe freeware. This bumped my transfer speed from 14Mb/sec up to 20Mb/sec sustained. I suspect that level of speed increase may only occur in Vista as its slow copy speeds are well documented. As such your XP mileage may vary, but there should be an increase regardless.
HTH,
Mike