Our CHEAPEST & FASTEST Network Speed Yet!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,262 words · ~6 min read
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whoa was that a 10 Gigabyte file
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transferring in just a few seconds what
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if I told you it was between two
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separate machines and then what if I
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told you we did it for less than $100 worth of used parts off eBay and
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less than an hour of tweaking within
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Windows well it's true and you could do
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it
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too I by power and MSI's new lineup of
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gaming laptops feature Intel's 7th generation core i7 processors check them
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out at the link below our
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Jour excuse me our journey began when I
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spotted a post on the Linus Tech tips for Forum where a user was showing off a
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local networking setup that boasted speeds three to four times higher than
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the one that we used in our guide to 10x
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in your network speed on a budget and at
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a lower price using secondhand
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Enterprise networking gear called
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infiniband so I sprung into action
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drafting an email to Jake that went something like hey this looks really
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cool but I'm super busy can you figure out what the junk is going on with this
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and he was like okay this looks pretty
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simple I order the cards in the post and a qsfp copper direct attached cable plug
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them in and it's Off to the Races right wrong the quad data rate or QDR 40 gbit
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infiniband cards we got off eBay were made by Q Logic a company that was
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acquired by Intel who doesn't provide
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Windows drivers and while showing these
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speeds on Linux would have been really cool the majority of our audience runs
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Windows so round two fight we began with high
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hopes for the MH rh2 A-
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xsr even though we couldn't find it on melanox website only to have them dashed
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by an inaccurate product listing the
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second one we bought is a d double data
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rate card and I've been informed that 20
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gbit transfer speeds are so last week l
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i not to be dissuaded from spending my money by the first two unsuccessful
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attempts Jake ordered a third pair of
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infin band adapters melanox mhq 19B
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dxtrs for 25 bucks each and a 5 m or 15t
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qsfp copper direct attach cable for 30
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bucks putting our total cost at
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$80 and still under $150 for a much
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longer link with a 45t cable running you
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about $90 the cards are PCI Express Gen 2 and
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should fit in any reasonably modern computer so install then in Windows
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device manager you should see melanox
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connect X2 IPI B adapter if they don't
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show up then install the wiof archive
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version 4.95 then update it to 5.10 for
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the most stable results theoretically
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this will update your cards to the latest firmware but if it didn't we will
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have a blog post on the LT Forum that outlines the detailed steps for forcing
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this manually as well as some other details about the process check it out
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below with the cards recognized we have functioning infiniband NYX but no subnet
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manager which assigns an ID to the Nyx
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and creates a routing table based off that so effectively then there's no way
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for them to receive or send anything since one of the most likely use cases
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for something like this would be a high-speed SMB or I scuzzy server and a
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preferred client somewhere else on the network we opted to install op SM on the
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test bench representing our file server
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again you can find the full details in the blog post we're getting close to the
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end now we need to assign IP addresses to our infiniband adapters but since
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they can't be used to communicate with the other Ethernet and Wi-Fi devices on
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our Network we want to put them on a separate subnet and keep our normal
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Ethernet plugs plugged into the motherboard so if your home network is1
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21680 something then you could go with
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192.168.1 something let's say 20 for our
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server and 21 for our game machine
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almost there except the new network pop
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up on both machines run a quick ping test to make sure they can see each
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other then to ensure that the higher
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speed link is used when transferring data between the two machines adjust
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their priority by changing automatic metric to some number we chose 20 for
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our onboard Ethernet and 10 for our
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infiniband and Bam you should have a 40
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gigabit link though please note it'll show up as 32 gbit due to 810 encoding
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and all that's missing now is some kind of drive that can actually saturate that
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kind of a connection fortunately we
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still have those 16 gig sticks of Dominator Platinum that we were supposed
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to send back to Corsair but then our PR rep left and didn't tell anybody and our
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buds over at soft perfect hooked us up with their RAM dis software 7 GB per
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second anybody unfortunately on consumer
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versions of Windows we didn't see quite the results we were hoping for latencies
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were still super low which makes sense
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since infiniband is an Enterprise technology intended for storage area
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networks but we capped out at about one
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Gigabyte per second for our maximum
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bandwidth file transfer tests similar to
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10 GB Ethernet so what gives well the
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answer is RDMA on Windows server or
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Linux we could expect much better perhaps a followup later let us know in
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the comments if you'd like to see that either way we're pleased as punch with
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the results because compared to 10 GB Ethernet we do lose the interoperability
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with other Ethernet gear but we gain the
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same transfer speeds as long as all we're looking for is point to point and
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a whole lot of money to put back into our
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wallets so this is an interesting one we've got today this is the tma2 modular
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headphone system from II it lets you create your own
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headphones providing a vast range of interchangeable options through their
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configuration at you can change the headband you can change the speaker
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units you can change the ear pads and even the cables although that last one
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is sort of more normal everything else though is like freaking crazy there's
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over a thousand different total combinations that you can build
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depending on whether they're for everyday use DJing studio recording or
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you want something that's really light and portable and not just that they can
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be taken back apart and recombined with
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add-on parts that you can get down the road if for whatever reason you want to
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change up the experience so check out their configurator at the link in the
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video description and build your own today so thanks for watching guys
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dislike or a like get subscribed maybe check out the link to where to buy the
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stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch
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store where you can buy cool shirts and posters and all that kind of stuff as well as our community form which you
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should totally join now that you're done doing all that stuff check out this
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latest video over on uh oh actually I don't know what videos we featuring now
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so check out a video it'll it'll show up or something