Newer drivers ARE better. Go figure.
For some time now, I’ve been having issues in which my HP MediaSmart Server (powered by Windows Home Server) would experience less-than-stellar network throughput and even fail to respond at times. Given the fragile nature of Windows Home Server and value I place on my data, I dared not deviate from the baseline HP configuration. Until now.
Given this was clearly a network-related issue, I checked out the SiS191 network adapter in Device Manager. I was shocked to find HP baselined the server on drivers over a year old. I ran a benchmark using AIDA32 3.92 from my desktop to the server (connected via CAT-5 @ 100mbit through a customized Linksys WRT54G).
Figure 1 - Old drivers…
Figure 2 - Network performance on old drivers is all over the place…
Average speed: 6301.3 KB/s
According to SiS, the latest driver for SiS191 chipsets is 2.0.1039.1100 dated 03/03/2008 (Update 3/31: The download package on their site is dated 03/11/2008). After ignoring all the warnings and legalese on SiS’s website, I down’ed the package, remoted into my server, installed the driver, and rebooted, fingers crossed. The server went down, flashed its cute LEDs in a multitude of scary colors (e.g. red), and came back up… without issues. I ran a second benchmark to see if there were any improvements. And there were!
Figure 3 - Network performance on newer drivers, much more stable. Oh and faster!
Average speed: 6436.1 KB/s
Figure 4 - Before and after overlay (rough).
Green = new // Red = old.
As you can see, the newer drivers yielded an increase in average speed and a much more stable level of throughput. It appears my server-went-to-sleep syndrome has disappeared as well. What were your results?
(03/31 - Please note your mileage may vary. My server is only on a 100mbit line. Users on 1Gbit lines could reap an additional increase in performance. Cough, Linksys, could you send me a router?)
[...] Then updating the SiS191 network adapter in Device Manager to the latest driver version should cure your problem. For the details including before and after performance graphs, see Rafeels not affiliated within Windows blog. [...]
When I went looking I found this:
SiS191 Gigabit LAN & SiS190 LAN Driver
File Name sgl205.zip
Version v2.05
Release Date 2008-03-11
Even newer than yours???
John,
Thanks for pointing that out. The driver in the package is actually dated 03/03/08. I’ll make a note of that in the post.
Would one of you fellows please provide simple, step by step instructions for updating the adapter on my Windows Home Server?
I have downloaded the file, but I am clueless about finding the server’s Device Manager, or, as the original poster suggested, “remoting it” onto the server.
Thanks.
I must say, I was disappointed in the results you found. I linked to this entry from an try in the Windows Home Server blog saying “Do you have a HP MediaSmart Server and find that the network speed and throughput should not be as it should?”. I thought it would be great to actually get better file transfer performance and so here I came.
Your results show a 2% improvement. I guess one could say “well, it’s something”, but really, it’s probably not even noticeable. Yes, that multi-gigabyte transfer will take a few seconds less. Imagine, from 3 minutes down to a screaming 2 minutes 56 seconds! Woot!
That said, I suppose the fix has other benefits, including a more ’stable’ dataflow. But, from a “I might get more speed? How!” reaction, this was a big letdown. :)
Thanks anyway,
bear
Bear,
I’m sorry if I gave my fellow blogosphere pals the impression this article was about increasing speed, this isn’t the case. I am happier about the increase in stability and the disappearing of my “server-not-responding” issues than the increases in speed.
Besides, I am not properly equipped to test speed. Being on a 100mbit line, I can only go so fast. I would like to repeat the test with gigabit-speed hardware in place…
I’ll add a note to the article, thanks for the feedback!
I’m still trying to figure out how you used device manager to reach the SIS191…I don’t see how one does this with VISTA.
You can access the entire underlying operating system on your Windows Home Server by using Remote Desktop.
1. Using Windows Vista, click the Start orb, then type: remote desktop connection
2. In the Computer input box, type the hostname of your server, click Connect
3. When presented with a login screen, login with user “Administrator” and whatever administrative password you set (same one used for the connector software)
I hope that I’m not experiencing the placebo effect but I updated the driver and i felt it made my network throughput a lot more consistent instead of bouncing all over the place as it was doing before.
I recently installed the new drivers. I still get around 230mbs to 250mbs trabsfer rates between my three Vista machines. But I do see where the burst speeds don’t jump extremely high anymore. Whether that is good or bad I don’t know. I’d really like to get 300mbs to 350mbs transfer rates like I get when I transfer from VISTA machine to VISTA machine.
I was hoping this would eliminate the streaming video issues I have (every 60 secs approx it stutters, getting worse the longer the video).
I installed the newer SiS 191 drivers on my mediasmart server last night. I have to say I’m very impressed. With the original in-box drivers, file transfers seem to start out ok (20-25MB/s), but over the course of a large transfer (multi-GB video files), it would slow down dramatically (to perhaps 8MB/s). With the new drivers, the file transfer maintained a consistent 30MB/s speed over my Gigabit network, which I would bet is probably maxing the sustained write speed of the drives in the server.
This was just a single file copy, and I’ll do some more testing tonight, but this looks like a very promising improvement for an annoying problem.
Vista SP1 has some improvements for large file copies to older OS’s (WHS is based on W2003, so it qualifies). If you’re suffering from slow file copy from a Vista client to WHS, you might want to consider updating to Vista SP1 instead of or in addition to rev’ing the drivers.
Can anybody get the port to go into Gig status (1000/full)? It will not let me hard code it and auto neg to a gig port only comes up as 100/full. I’m guessing because I cannot hard code it, it is not supported? Do others see the same thing when they go to the adapter’s “Advanced” tab then the “Speed & Duplex” settings (no 1000/full)? Thanks!