In article , wrote: :It takes 1 min 25 seconds to copy 4GB file from one physical drive to :another on the same machine. It takes 8 minutes to copy the same file :from one machine to another over the 100 megabit network (source and :destination drives are very similar hardware wise, both 160 GB Seagate, :one SATA, another - ATA 100, same generation), and the network :utilization is about 85-90%.
:Does it mean the network is a bottleneck ?
That's about 71.5 megabits/s, which is not terrible for tcp but could be better.
:Will I gain anyting by :upgrading to 1 gigabit considering that prices on this equipment are :now reasonable ?
I suggest that you test your network using ttcp . That will give you an idea of whether the bottleneck is your disk or your network.
You don't happen to mention your operating system or NIC or anything about the architecture of your systems. You also don't happen to mention what tool you are using to do the copy. We don't really have enough information to tell from the given inforrmation where the bottleneck is.
With that data rate, my -suspicion- is that you are starting to hit the limit either of your NIC or of your architecture transfering data to or from the NIC. If it is your NIC, then a different NIC might get you a bit better performance even with everything else the same. If it's the architecture, then going gig won't necessarily help at all.
:What is the importance of Gigabit switch supporting :Jumbo frames ?
That depends greatly on your traffic patterns. Do you have a managed switch now? If so then look at the packet size histograms. If, as is common, most of your packets are < 256 bytes, then jumbo frames aren't going to help very much. If a fair portion of your packets are of maximum size, then jumbo frames could be beneficial.
Jumbo frames are of greatest use when you are often transfering large files. They reduce the overhead of IP transmissions by reducing the number of times the MACs and IPs and TCP sequence numbers and so on need to be transmitted -- by about 60*6*8 bit-times per jumbo frame compared to regular sized frames. That's not very much at all at gigabit speeds, so you have to look at other factors if you are transmitting on a local LAN. Consider the advantages when you have a large latency (many fewer ACKs). Consider too the effects when you have noticable contention for a shared link --- getting 6 times as much data through per instance that you are able to seize the link can be a significant advantage if other devices are usually waiting to transmit...