MVP performance, a tip for you all

[glensh]

Thanks for the tip ram4x4nut,

I had read in another post that most on-board nic's DO support process offloading, but I think you are probably correct that they do not.

I have a Gigabyte motherboard with on-board nic and I am having a few MVP connection problems. Is there any way of determing if your motherboard's nic supports process offloading? I checked the Gigabyte website but I couldn't find any information on it.

Can anyone suggest a good NIC card to buy?

[rayxyz]

I had the same connection problems until I installed a dedicated PCI based NIC and disabled the onboard NIC in the bios. I purchased mine at Newegg. It shipped quickly, has a realtek chipset and has worked perfectly since. Link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6833338001

Hope this helps.

PS I tried the registry hack to Enable Network Adapter Onboard Processor with this card and was less than impressed with the results. I had since deleted the registry entry and everything has been running smoothly

[soccerdad]

OK since it seems my job on the forum is to as the dumb questions...What is process off loading and how does it make my MVP work better?

[ram4x4nut]

Process offloading on a NIC is a feature of XP and I believe win2K also and possible LINUX. If your NIC does not support it, or it is disabled, then all network processing is done on the systems CPU. If your NIC supports it and it is enabled then the processing is done on the NIC and not the CPU.

The result is more than you think it might be for those with fast CPU's. If the NIC does not have to wait for a cycle on the CPU to process it's request then there will be much less network lag. You may say that "My CPU is only ever 4% busy, why would I care?" That's a common and good question. The CPU percent busy is not the concern. The concern is that no matter how fast the CPU is the NIC must wait it's turn for a request to process. Granted the wait time is much shorter on fast CPU's but there is still a wait time. And things like the MVP are very picky about ANY kind of wait time.

Addressing the on-board question/issue ...

Most on-boards DON'T have this capability unless it is a really high end MOBO. The reason is cost and design. The MOBO manufacturers figure "why add another chip and increase cost when the CPU can do to the work?".

Now, I know that in XP and win2k this feature is DISABLED no matter what kind of NIC you have, regradless of your NIC's capabilities. Here is the registry key that needs to be checked.
This is a DWORD value.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters]DisableTaskOffload
Set this to 00000000 to enable the NIC's onboard processor
Set this to 00000001 to disable the NIC's onboard processor

Most of you will want to set this to 00000000.

I don't think you will harm anything by enabling this even of your NIC dosn't support it. You can always change it to 00000001 or delete the key if you think it made things worse.

If you don't have this key, it doesn't mean your NIC doesn't support this. Just add a new DWORD making sure you spell the key name properly and use upper and lower case exactly like the one above. Set the value to either 0 or 1 HEX.

You can read more about it at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/docum.../94176.asp

As far as finding out if your MOBO's NIC supports this, good luck. That is not something most manufacturers manuals will contain. You can try adding the key and seeing how it affects your PC's network. It will not hose you PC at all. Basically if your NIC can't do it, Windows will ignore the value.

Hope that helps!

[glensh]

Local store has DLink, Linksys, and NetGear 10/100 cards all for around $25 (Canadian $$).

Any suggestions which brand to buy? I'm leaning toward the Linksys.

Linksys LNE100TX-CA, EtherFast 10/100 LAN Card
D-Link DFE-530TX 10/100 Mb Ethernet NIC Adapter with Wake on LAN
Netgear FA311CN 10/100 Low Profile PCI Network Interface Card

[ram4x4nut]

I've always had good luck with Netgear and Linksys .. stay away from 3com .. too expensive and in my opinion they are never very stable.

[katit]

Now, I know that in XP and win2k this feature is DISABLED no matter what kind of NIC you have, regradless of your NIC's capabilities.

Ok. Here is the thing. I only replaced card. I did not modify reg. value and it works for me.

My computer dedicated server for MVP, eMule (!!!) and also my web server.

No problems since I had PCI NIC installed.

[scott]

so according to katit - win XP is now in fact sensing if a nic card can take over the processing? I have a pretty nice pci nic card (3com) which I'm sure has this capability.

If this is true, then I don't have to ask 4x4 nut how I go about changing the registery value number he listed above!

[ram4x4nut]

Since I don't have one of those pricey 3com rigs I can't say for sure, but you should check that registry entry either way. If it is not set in the registry then it doesn't matter if your NIC is capable or not it is not being used (XP and Win2K for sure). The operating system decides to use it, not the NIC. You may run just fine without the registry entry but if it isn't set and you are banging hard on your CPU you will certainly see network slowdowns. If you have very little CPU use you would likely not notice it however, the MVP is quite particular about uninterrupted network streams.
Not looking for confrontation here, but this is a fact that even Microsoft admits to.
Glad you 3Com's are working for you. When I was in charge of an IT department years ago we purchased 80 3com NIC's. 14 were dead out of the box and around 22 of them were constantly dropping connections. I sent them all back, bought Netgear NIC's and all 80 of them worked flawlessly for the 3+ years that I was there.

I personally have owned 3Com 3C905B-TX and 3C503 cards and they never were stable. I had all kinds of network problems until I replaced them with a Netgear and a Linksys. I still have those cards and they have never been unstable at all. And I am sure that no one can argue that 3Com products are insanely overpriced.

Scott,

All you have to do is run regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Look for an entry under there named "DisableTaskOffload"
If it is there make sure it's value is "0x00000000 (0)"

If it is not there then select Edit -> New -> DWORD Value

It will add a new DWORD and let you change the name. Change it to DisableTaskOffload (note that there are no spaces in that name and you must use upper and lower case exactly as I have shown).

It will automatically set the value to 0x00000000 (0)

It's that easy.

[scott]

tipster - didn't run for me, but I found a network improvement link on the hauppauge support page for the mvp that I bet does the same thing. Of course, my mvp isn't working yet so I don't know if there was a connectivity improvement!