A few notes on network copying
Having spent the best part of a day last week with my colleague Rupert (see his blog in the right hand column) trying to get a Win2K HiDef storage system to talk to a Linux film grading system here are a few observations regarding the efficiency of different network protocols.
1. NetBIOS (using the v 2.2.7a Samba server on Linux) - over TCP/IP runs at about a tenth of the speend of FTP under exactly the same conditions. I'd heard that Windows networking copying was inefficient but I was suprised how badly it did. Before you point the finger at Samba, it was actually a tad worse going between the Win2K and another XP computer.
2. Going between 100-BaseT and Gigabit only produces an improvement of about five-fold. This bears out the observation that most GigE implementations (over twisted pair) don't yet run duplex.
3. Cables count! Even short cat5 cables won't handle GigE - you need proper cat5E.
4. Win2K (unlike every other flavour of Windows) won't recognise unencrypted passwords. You have to tweak the registry to enable it:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanworkstation\parameters Set the key: enableplaintextpassword to a "1" to enable plain text passwords