Ethernet becomes slow under WinXP?

The problem is that Ethernet becomes slow under WinXP.

Months ago, I transferred some files form a desktop to a notebook PC. I had both win98 and WinXP installed on the desktop, and I feel the transfer rate was much slower when using WinXP than using win98. I used the notebook's taskmanager to show the network conditions. The green line was very close to 100% and pretty smooth under win98, while it was very different when it becomes XP to XP: the transfer rate was sometimes high(never over 85%), somthimes zero.

Today, I transferred files form Win2k to WinXP, then XP to XP, and I had the same feeling.

Therefore, I decided to do some test. I set the net to 100BaseTX Full/Half Duplex /Auto-Negotiation, the benchmark was 4924kB/s. While 1164kB/s was scored under 10BaseT Full/Half. The reference mark is 9848kB/s under 100BaseTX and 1160kB/s under 10BaseT. That means only less than a half of the bandwidth works under 100Mbps, while the bandwidth is almost fully used under 10Mbps.

Why that? How can I deal with the speed problem? Is that a hardware or software problem?

-----------------------------<font color=green>
Test setup:
Notebook:
Piii700-M (550MHz when only use battery)
224MB PC100 SDRAM
KingMax 10/100Mbps Ethernet PC Card
Windows XP Pro.

Desktop:
AthlonXP 1800+
256MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
10/100Mbps Fast NIC (VIA VT6102)
Windows XP Pro

Other:
2-metre CAT-5e UTP Direct Connect
SiSoft Sandra Pro (2002.1.8.59)
NetBEUI installed (same conditions when removed)
IP set 192.168.0.89/90</font color=green>

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God's in His Heaven
All's Right with The World!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by motofan on 08/31/02 11:58 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

I know 100M is theoretical. But the main problem is that the transfer rate is so low only under winXP. There is not such a problem under win98.

The transfer rate is so different that even the LED (the flash frequency)on the NIC can show that.



<font color=blue><b>God's in His Heaven
All's Right with The World!</b></font color=blue>

I didn't install NetBEUI to windows XP when connecting windows 98. Then I heard NetBEUI was good for small network. Thus, I installed NetBEUI (included in windows XP CD) to XP, and did the test above.

But the problem is just there whenever you install or remove NetBEUI.


<font color=blue><b>God's in His Heaven
All's Right with The World!</b></font color=blue>