network utilization

[Guest]

this may come as a stupid question, but I'm wondering about my network's
bandwidth. when I open the windows task manager and head over to the
networking tab it says that on my two nic's (one for internet, one for
internet sharing) the 'network utilization' is less than one percent for both
of them. Why is that? Is there a way that I can force windows to use more
of my 100mbps network (or get another prgram that wil make it happen)? I'd
also like to know exactly what 'network utilization' means, I assume its the
percentage of bandwidth that my system si consuming but I'm not sure.

 

[Bob Willard]

this may come as a stupid question, but I'm wondering about my network's
bandwidth. when I open the windows task manager and head over to the
networking tab it says that on my two nic's (one for internet, one for
internet sharing) the 'network utilization' is less than one percent for both
of them. Why is that? Is there a way that I can force windows to use more
of my 100mbps network (or get another prgram that wil make it happen)? I'd
also like to know exactly what 'network utilization' means, I assume its the
percentage of bandwidth that my system si consuming but I'm not sure.

That does, as you guessed, display the % of the network currently being used.
If you are not doing any transfers, it should be nearly zero. If you want to
see how much you can use, create a large (~1GB) file, then copy it from one
PC to another across your LAN, and watch the display. On the 100 Mb/s piece
of my home LAN, I get 7.8-9.9 MB/s with corresponding network usage rates
on the TaskManager display of >75%. {The STRs vary, depending on the source
and sink PCs chosen and which PC is commanding the transfer; my PCs are not
all equally capable, but all run 100 Mb/s FDX.}