ICS in Windows 2000 - Speed Limit? (W2K)

[paperninja]

I recently installed Windows 2000 on the machine I'm using to run ICS to share a 512Kbps ADSL connection (on a USB modem) over a small local network. Previously I had Windows 98 doing this task perfectly well, but I thought that Windows 2000 should be a bit more robust for the job. I set it up and it seems to work okay, but I'm seeing really poor transfer rates on any of the sharing machines compared to the same situation with Windows 98.

With the ICS computer running W98 and no apps, I can download (for example) the Java Runtime from the Sun site using one of the networked computers at 50KB/sec. For the same deal with ICS on W2k, I'm lucky to get 5KB/sec. Sometimes web-pages stall for ages or fail to load at all. For the most-part things will work if I just leave them long enough (it certainly doesn't look like anything's catastrophically wrong), but it's not very useful.

I should note that downloading files on the computer running ICS goes at the full speed of the ADSL connection. In the aforementioned example I can download the J2RE at 50KB/sec or more.

Right now I'm using W98 again, though I don't like having to leave that machine logged in just to get a connection.

Any advice? Is this normal? Does Windows 2000 limit the bandwidth of the sharing computers?

Thanks,

paperninja.

[POBrien]

regardless of the scenarios that you're experiencing, you'll need to get a switch instead of the hub to divide the bandwidth evenly.

good luck

POBrien

[paperninja]

I had one until a week ago when a power surge toasted it :( That'll teach me to use cheap equipment with no surge protection. I'm using a hub again for the moment. Still, most of the time there's only one computer making any significant use of the connection at once. But as I say, the issue at hand is that W98 gives me reasonable bandwidth and response, while W2k gives me poor bandwidth and unreliable response times.

Regards,

paperninja

[acetrbleshooter0]

I don't know the source or solution to your problem unfortunately, but I can provide some advice. You should first consider using a RJ-45 jack from your modem, because USB isn't very reliable. With a little money, you can solve any ICS problems once and for all if you buy a NIC card for each computer, and a router. This will allow fast 10/100Mb networking and internet sharing between the computers with no software involved.

[stevenaddis]

I just got a home cable connection installed. I had a problem with a 98 machine getting about 350kb with a bandwidth test. I also had strange problems with the internet access. I used the Winguides tweak tool to change the internet settings. Now, I am getting over 1500kb at peak time! I hear it is best to adjust the settings on all machines, the ICS and clients.

I keep checking everyday to see if this will stay the same.

I hope this helps in some way.