Network Upgrade Speed Issue

[Stuart264]

Quade

I am having a slight issue with the network speed upgrade since Virgin Media upgraded my cable to 150 Mbps (I am actually getting 173 Mb. Firstly its bringing my system to a standstill during the unrar, despite me trying the performance switches, right now I have "Write Downloaded Files with No Memory Buffering" and Reduce the Amount of CPU that Par and Unrar can use" enabled which does help but its still bringing the system to a virtual standstill. I have a pretty decent system I5 Quad Core processor on a very good motherboard with SATA3 Hard Drives. I know you have done some mods for SSD's etc in Newsbin and I wanted to ask if while optimising newsbin for SSD's something could have inadvertently affected users such as myself.

Secondly the speed limiter only goes up to a max of 95 Mbps and I wanted to ask where I need to go into the configuration files to increase this to match the speed increase?

Stuart.

[Quade]

I have a pretty decent system I5 Quad Core processor on a very good motherboard with SATA3 Hard Drives.

It's probably your virus scanner. I'd remove it, reboot, try a couple downloads, then see how it performances. If it's much better, you might want to make it ignore the unrar folder and then scan it after the fact or find a better V scanner. My machine doesn't even notice unrars.

[Stuart264]

Thats the problem it isnt my Anti-Virus, that was my first thought, but I run Vipre 2014 for just that reason and not only is the Newsbin executable whitelisted so are the working directory (C:\Newsbin) and the download directory (C:\Newsgroups) plus I just ran a test download in Newsbin and then checking the logs in Vipre (at diagnostic level) and the whitelisting is working perfectly its totally ignoring Newsbin. Nor is it driver level, I also checked on both the motherboard manufacturer and the Intel website to make sure the drivers for the Intel Network, I/O, North and South Bridge are up to date before I posted.

The only thing I know for sure is I get a system standstill when Newsbin is running a Par2 repair / extracting while downloads are running.

[itimpi]

I am also on Virgin media and have a similar download speed and similar spec machine. My machine performance does not seem to be affected when doing an UnRAR although I do find I can run out of free buffers so the download speed can drop.

[Stuart264]

Actually that could have identified the culprit as due to the amount of memory I have fitted I changed the ChunkCacheSize= variable ages ago, I have set back to the default value of 100 and test it.

[Quade]

I have set back to the default value of 100 and test it.

Default is 200 theses days and 400 seems be actually optimal for most larger files.

Are you unraring and repairing to a local internal drive?

[Stuart264]

Well i have been away overnight and just set it to 400 and will see how it goes on some large ish files. I have Newsbin set to download and unrar on the same drive.

[DThor]

Two thoughts if it doesn't work - anything capable of spinning down or going offline, like a usb or network drive, is important information and you didn't answer Quade's question about that. Maybe that was inferred in your answer...

Also, many(most) antivirus are aggressive, low level and frequently difficult to accurately control software. You might be following all the instructions accurately to get it to leave newsbin alone, but it's still getting between newsbin and the disk. Best to kill it completely rather than assume adding some excludes eliminates it as a possibility. FWIW Microsoft Security Essentials is surprisingly hands - off, straightforward to configure and free to boot.

I know it sounds nit - picky but the vast majority of problems users run into are wrapped around things that are incorrectly dismissed, and since the vast majority of users aren't having your problem...it means getting specific.

DT

[BartNL]

I have Newsbin set to download and unrar on the same drive.

if this is your PC's system disk / only disk it might be causing the problems described. Especially if your PC is low on RAM. With a 150Mbps download connection I would suggest a dedicated/seperate download PAR and RAR harddisk to keep up with the required harddisk activity for such speeds.

[Stuart264]

Thats the thing, its not a system thats low in RAM the system is built with 16gb of RAM at the moment. Though after running some tests it seems that the drive is running at 100% and struggling to keep up with the simultaneous demands of downloading and unrar/repair at the same time so I have switched on pause download during unrar/repair and thats helping some.

[Quade]

I'd be inclined to think it's totally the hard disk. I still think you should remove the V scanner reboot and try some downloads without it. I download and unrar to a single disk and my machine doesn't even notice it. Pausing download should help but, I suspect some underlying bottleneck.

[Stuart264]

You make a good point, I will have to go deeper into the logs and run a few experiments and see if I can figure out what's happening.

[Stuart264]

And the culprit is.........Vipre Antivirus, the moment I removed it and switched to a trial version of Bitdefender the problem went away.......

[Quade]

People push back when I tell them it's the V scanner but, probably 90% of the weird issues come down to V scanners screwing with downloads and disk IO. Avast is the worst. It messes with all aspects of downloading but, the others aren't much better. The only one I've seen not screw up downloads is Microsoft's scanner.

[mimauk]

People push back when I tell them it's the V scanner but, probably 90% of the weird issues come down to V scanners screwing with downloads and disk IO. Avast is the worst. It messes with all aspects of downloading but, the others aren't much better. The only one I've seen not screw up downloads is Microsoft's scanner.

Do you have enough info to give a Top Five or Worst Five virus scanners as related to NB?

[Quade]

Sorry, I don't. I don't use them.

[Stuart264]

I think its more that 3 years ago when I swapped from Avast I looked round for a lightweight A/V program and back then Vipre was the leading contender and I haven't checked out the comparisons since until the other day to discover just how bloated its become. I think the objective lesson learned is no matter how good a discount you get for 3 years, I will in future only renew my anti-virus for 12 months, that way I get prompted to do the comparison again.

[wiggins09]

As far as AV goes I use Comodo CIS. http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/security-software.php
I don't have any problems with leeching being slowed down.

I took CIS off recently as I had a Kaspersky Internet Security license given me - Kaspersky was uninstalled within 24hrs & I was back with CIS which I find much more configurable & controllable.
I don't like being told what I can access & that it's not up to me to decide what is hostile.
CIS once setup gives me a secure FW environment (on it's custom ruleset) & doesn't auto delete files that I am trying to edit & use! & not to sound too much like a fanboy but the defense+ has stopped a few nasty malware installers that have appeared of late.
Over the last 10 years I have had Bitdefender, Norton (was & still is one of the worst ever IMO), AVG, Panda, (was quite good a while back), Bullguard (rivals Norton for uselessness) & McAfee.
Every time I give these others a shot, I just end up going back to CIS, it works, it gives me some control & it's free.

As a case in point I had a new laptop with the usual free trial & it's nag screens insisting I buy the license or my world would end. I figured I'd see how it got on for the 30 days, even tho it really annoyed me at times. Then I uninstalled it & put CIS on.
Updated it & scanned & the list of malware missed by the paid solution appeared.
1 virus 'proper' & more than 30 malware components had got in. (stuff like trackers, url hijacks etc)

So as a 'power' user I say use CIS, it doesn't seem to create any lag (comparatively) & gives you control, if you know nothing/don't need to know about setting stuff up or how malware works, free CIS still works but the paid for Comodo with online live assist or Kaspersky might be better bets right now.
The pre-installed free trials on new machines may as well be uninstalled right after you power up the machine in my experience.


Another related piece of freeware is hashtab, which is a cool way of checking files for integrity, tampering etc, useful in these days of infected downloads
http://www.implbits.com/hashtab.aspx