odd gigabit network speed issue.

[God_Of_Death]

I have a WRT600N, two computers with Realtek RLT8168C gigabit NICs and my network transfer speeds vary by a huge margin. I usually don't care about the speeds when i am moving small files but I am backing up my file server and i am talking about 14tb's worth of data. i average around 20megs/sec and it dips into the teens more often than i would like. my transfer speeds shoot up into the 60meg range when i am surfing and d/l'ing off the internet but drops back down to 20megs when my internet is idle. so it makes me ask.......WTF is going on? i did some googleling but nothing so far. i played with the nic settings on both computers and nothing. i want my 60megs/sec so i can finish the back up sooner rather than later.

EDIT: and no, my main rig is not the P4 in my sig. both computers are new and highend.

 

[Fint]

transfer speeds are a poor indicator of network performance, as many many factors come into play. Start off by testing your network speeds with a program like iperf; it will take all of the other factors out. If your network is performing as expected, but your transfers still are slow, then you can start to look at other things (like hard drive speed)

 

[Syntax Error]

Is the server RAIDed up with a lot of throughput capable within the array? The bottleneck could very well be the computer that is transferring the files, but I wouldn't know as you haven't really specified your system specs.