Share MacPro's Gigabit Ethernet with local Powerbook?

[hayduke]

I just got a MacPro at work and I will use this machine in conjunction with my Powerbook a lot. I realized that I could connect the Powerbook to the MacPro with an ethernet cable, given that the MacPro has two ethernet ports. I turned on internet sharing and I am able to browse from the Powerbook and connect to the MacPro as a server. I expected near Gigabit connection speeds when transfering files between machines, but the were closer to 100Mb (~7-9MB/s).

Is it possible to connect the two machines and get Gigabit speeds?

 

[jsw]

Does your Powerbook model support gigabit? Older ones did not.

 

[hayduke]

I can't find anything about the ethernet speed under the System Profiler, but it is only about 2 years old (PB 1.67GHz, pre-hi res screens), but I'm pretty sure it is Gigabit capable.

 

[Queso]

That model is. You should get Gigabit speeds between the two providing you are using a good quality 4-pair UTP cable (Cat 5e or Cat 6).

You may want to also check that the ethernet settings on both computers match, otherwise duplex errors will cause retransmissions and slow TCP down massively. In System Preferences>>Network>>Built in Ethernet go to the Ethernet panel and make sure that either both sides are set to 1000T or both are set to automatic. Set to automatic as preference.

 

[hayduke]

I'll double check the cable and the settings. Thanks for the tips. Glad to know it should work in principal. Thanks guys.

 

[SpaceMagic]

I had similar problem... found out Cat 6 cable best.

 

[hayduke]

So I have new Cat-6 cable running between the two machines and the ethernet settings are all "automatic" (though I tried manual settings with no improvement). Currently I'm getting ~10.1MB/s from MacPro to Powerbook (using scp) and ~15.1MB/s from Powerbook to MacPro. The later results exceeds the cabability of a 100Mb line so something is working well, but I would expecting an even faster connection. Any thoughts? I don't think I'm disk write-speed limited...am I?

 

[hayduke]

Your milelage may vary...

Using AFP (connect MacPro as server) I can transfer files at about 30MB/s which is roughly what I would expect. So this is promising, but leaves me wondering why different protocols would have different transfer speeds.

Thoughts?