How fast should my gigabit ethernet network be?

Mr. Latte wrote:

I do see improvement for your 100MB file test:

New iMac to new iMac - 7 seconds

But still I think your new iMacs with SATA3 should be able to do better than that.

My iMacs have the fusion drives. I don't really know how to improve this. I'm getting much better results than I did before, but you are getting way better results. 7 seconds is much better than the 25 I had before, but you are getting 1 second. I'm just jealous. Maybe the new wifi standard ac will be the trick and I can forget about all this wiring. If I find any other info about my situation I will report. My friend promised to come by with some testing gear, so that might be useful info.

Thanks to those who have spent some time here trying to help. I really appreciate it.

I'm back! I just did some more tests with newer computers. New iMac to new iMac through home network is getting about 100 Mbps. In other words, best speed for 100 Mb file is about 7 seconds. Your results are stll way faster.

Mr. Latte wrote:

Results:

- Sending a 104.8MB dmg file would take just about 1.1 seconds.

- Sending a 109.7MB file directory that contains many subdirectories with long filenames and small items would then take about 2 seconds.

Okay, so I tried my 2011 Macbook Pro directly connected to brand new iMac with ethernet cable. Speed was slightly faster, but pretty much the same as before. This shows that the issue has zero to do with my home networking since it's the same with directly connected cables. By the way, I tried more than one cable in case that was the issue. I'm stumped. I will call Apple again to inquire. Sometimes it takes finding the right support person.

Thinking of buying a new AC wifi router to see if that gives better performance. All the reviews tell me that gigabit ethernet is still better than AC, but it might be better than my ethernet as reports are that 300 Mbps is typical and while that is nowhere near gigabit, it's triple what I am getting now.

Okay, so I have discovered something else which is good, but annoying. The Lan Speed Test utility I was using was totally giving me wrong results. I went back to copying a real 100mb movie file and it copied over in about 1-2 seconds, so exactly what I was looking for. That's how I was doing it before when I had the much slower results, but something has clearly changed with getting the new iMacs to improve that, but this stupid utility was giving me false info. DO NOT EVER USE THIS STUPID UTILITY!!

Okay, so BobHarris asks some good questions which I have no idea how to answer. Why do I care, now that I have the speed I expect? Well, because it is not so simple. When I access a Finder window on the other computer, it often is slow at refreshing and certainly if I reorder the files or search for a file, it can hang the whole Finder. Is this normal? Bob, if you can suggest how these settings you are referring to should be used, that would be great. Thanks.

Otherwise, my problem has been solved, but I don't really know why.

Thank you Bob, and to be clear, you are right. I was expressing frustration with myself for relying on that utility which had nothing to do with you. Indeed I found your question helpful. Sorry, Neville, if there was any question about that because it certainly was not my intention. Glad Bob understood! 🙂 And for the record, I really appreciate your insights on this too, Neville.

So the way you describe it Bob, gives me insight into the complexity of network sharing. Lots of back and forth requests to do what seems like a simple thing. I want to circle right back to my original need in case you have any useful thoughts.

I have a home network with two computers and we both need to share media out of the same folder, so we are sharing the folder off of one computer. I had thought that a shared NAS would be the way to go, but many have warned not to do that as it is fraught with issues. Much more simple to just share the folder between computers. Fine, it works, but while file transfer is just fine (phew!) when I look to the remote computer folder, it seriously lags and even sometimes hangs when I search for a document. These are all Photoshop or Jpeg graphic files and I need to be looking at them in icon view too. It just is very slow to navigate. If the file is there and I want to open it, no problem, but using the remote finder window like it's on my own iMac just does not work the same.

So Bob, or Neville, (or anyone!) if you were setting things up in my house like this, with just two iMacs that need to share stuff, what would you see as the best way to do it? Or, is what I am doing the only way and living with the hiccups is just the way it is. I expect perfection in my Mac in 2014! 😉