I have found this with both Windows 98 and 2000 when transferring from a Windows 7 machine using a share on the retro machine. I have been considering using an FTP server internally instead.

Recently I found one was incredibly slow because of my own boneheaded mistake. I have an awful Internet connection (I live in the countryside and can only get Internet via 4G with 1/5 bars signal strength) and I manage it by setting bandwidth limiters on each machine from my pfSense firewall so a single instance of Netflix doesn't swamp the connection. I forgot to set a firewall rule allowing connections between VLANs (between my home Wifi, office, and retro machine networks) without bandwidth limitations before the rule with bandwidth limitations for connecting to the outside world. So I was initially baffled when it took all night to transfer a game ISO over to a Windows 2000 machine at 2Mbps.

Have you tried SMBv1? Samba3 works out of the box and the network shares are cross-compatible with modern Windows versions, too:
Re: Newest version of Windows for file transfer

Accessing a 2TB network share on Windows 98 is magical. It can even handle files larger than 4GB.

I get around 30MB/s transfer speed by default on my P3 box, which is fast enough for me.
Needless to say, SMBv1 shouldn't be exposed to the web. 😀

schmatzler wrote on 2020-06-12, 22:02:

Have you tried SMBv1? Samba3 works out of the box and the network shares are cross-compatible with modern Windows versions, too: […]
Show full quote

Have you tried SMBv1? Samba3 works out of the box and the network shares are cross-compatible with modern Windows versions, too:
Re: Newest version of Windows for file transfer

Accessing a 2TB network share on Windows 98 is magical. It can even handle files larger than 4GB.

I get around 30MB/s transfer speed by default on my P3 box, which is fast enough for me.
Needless to say, SMBv1 shouldn't be exposed to the web. 😀

30 MB/sec in Windows 98 SMB ? Wow ! I can't even get more than 20MB/sec with FTP under Windows . What are you using to optimize the TCP stack ? I am missing something ?

EDIT: Are you using JUMBO frames ?
EDIT2: I am using Windows 98 SE, to be precise .
EDIT3: As mentioned in a previous post, I am getting 43MB/sec running FTP under Linux, so the issue is definitely only on Windows 98 SE .

Pardon my interjection, but is WinME as limited as win98se, or is it faster? if its different it may help track down the causes.

Cobra42898 wrote on 2020-06-13, 00:10:

Pardon my interjection, but is WinME as limited as win98se, or is it faster? if its different it may help track down the causes.

I have heard rumours that ME is better in that respect, but I have not seen the numbers .

darry wrote on 2020-06-12, 23:07:

What are you using to optimize the TCP stack ?

Nothing! Maybe I am just lucky with the combination of drivers and hardware.
I run a fully patched Win98SE (with the 2004 Update CD) and have installed all chipset drivers for my Abit VH6T motherboard.
It's also maxed out with a Tualatin 1.4GHz, so there's plenty of CPU power.

Network card is a 3com 3c905b, also running the latest drivers from vogonsdrivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=914

With that combination, I can push 30 MB/s over the network by default.

On a second note, it might have something to do with my IDE2SD adapter. I bought a highspeed SDXC card instead of using a loud hard drive:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07C9PZJL9/

schmatzler wrote on 2020-06-13, 19:53:

Nothing! Maybe I am just lucky with the combination of drivers and hardware. I run a fully patched Win98SE (with the 2004 Update […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2020-06-12, 23:07:

What are you using to optimize the TCP stack ?

Nothing! Maybe I am just lucky with the combination of drivers and hardware.
I run a fully patched Win98SE (with the 2004 Update CD) and have installed all chipset drivers for my Abit VH6T motherboard.
It's also maxed out with a Tualatin 1.4GHz, so there's plenty of CPU power.

Network card is a 3com 3c905b, also running the latest drivers from vogonsdrivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=914

With that combination, I can push 30 MB/s over the network by default.

On a second note, it might have something to do with my IDE2SD adapter. I bought a highspeed SDXC card instead of using a loud hard drive:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07C9PZJL9/

That 3C905B is a 100 Megabit NIC . It is impossible to get 30 Megabytes per second out of it . Did you mean 30 Megabits per second ?

I am getting 20 Megabytes per second in Windows 98 SE using a Gigabit Intel NIC .

Back in the day, we ran 3Com 3C905B-TX cards with 98SE. They were the fastest 100Mb card I ever found for 98SE.

I think there are some tweaks or possibly even a hack we used to be able to get the full bandwidth.... it's been so long that I don't remember exactly what we did to tweak the connection.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-13, 22:39:

Back in the day, we ran 3Com 3C905B-TX cards with 98SE. They were the fastest 100Mb card I ever found for 98SE.

I think there are some tweaks or possibly even a hack we used to be able to get the full bandwidth.... it's been so long that I don't remember exactly what we did to tweak the connection.

3COM 3C905B and 3C905C were my favourites too in the 100Mbps days . They work very well under Linux and Windows .

I didn't think network performance was so CPU limited on older machines before reading this, but wow - looks like it is!

My file server is running a Dothan core Pentium M @ 2.66GHz. That's a single core CPU from 2005 and is essentially a high clocked PIII-S with 2MB of cache and a QDR bus. Last night I logged in and took a look at CPU usage as it was receiving a 51 GB file from my HTPC. The transfer rate was a nice & steady 116 MB/s - basically saturating the gigabit connection. However, CPU load was indeed quite high, at ~72%.

Interestingly, on the HTPC side (a 4GHz i7-4790) CPU usage was next to nothing - something like 1%. So it looks like CPUs have gotten much better at this kinda thing over the years! That, or Win10's network stack is just super efficient. Or perhaps the Intel ethernet in the HTPC just has far less CPU overhead than the Realtek ethernet in the file server.

Whatever the case may be, I found it pretty interesting, and probably would have never even thought to look before reading this thread!

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2020-06-21, 16:16:

I didn't think network performance was so CPU limited on older machines before reading this, but wow - looks like it is! […]
Show full quote

I didn't think network performance was so CPU limited on older machines before reading this, but wow - looks like it is!

My file server is running a Dothan core Pentium M @ 2.66GHz. That's a single core CPU from 2005 and is essentially a high clocked PIII-S with 2MB of cache and a QDR bus. Last night I logged in and took a look at CPU usage as it was receiving a 51 GB file from my HTPC. The transfer rate was a nice & steady 116 MB/s - basically saturating the gigabit connection. However, CPU load was indeed quite high, at ~72%.

Interestingly, on the HTPC side (a 4GHz i7-4790) CPU usage was next to nothing - something like 1%. So it looks like CPUs have gotten much better at this kinda thing over the years! That, or Win10's network stack is just super efficient. Or perhaps the Intel ethernet in the HTPC just has far less CPU overhead than the Realtek ethernet in the file server.

Whatever the case may be, I found it pretty interesting, and probably would have never even thought to look before reading this thread!

I would guess that it's probably a combination of all the factors that you mentioned . On what bus is the Realtek in the Dothan, PCI Express, I would imagine ?

darry wrote on 2020-06-21, 16:25:

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2020-06-21, 16:16:

I didn't think network performance was so CPU limited on older machines before reading this, but wow - looks like it is! […]
Show full quote

I didn't think network performance was so CPU limited on older machines before reading this, but wow - looks like it is!

My file server is running a Dothan core Pentium M @ 2.66GHz. That's a single core CPU from 2005 and is essentially a high clocked PIII-S with 2MB of cache and a QDR bus. Last night I logged in and took a look at CPU usage as it was receiving a 51 GB file from my HTPC. The transfer rate was a nice & steady 116 MB/s - basically saturating the gigabit connection. However, CPU load was indeed quite high, at ~72%.

Interestingly, on the HTPC side (a 4GHz i7-4790) CPU usage was next to nothing - something like 1%. So it looks like CPUs have gotten much better at this kinda thing over the years! That, or Win10's network stack is just super efficient. Or perhaps the Intel ethernet in the HTPC just has far less CPU overhead than the Realtek ethernet in the file server.

Whatever the case may be, I found it pretty interesting, and probably would have never even thought to look before reading this thread!

I would guess that it's probably a combination of all the factors that you mentioned . On what bus is the Realtek in the Dothan, PCI Express, I would imagine ?

Yep, embedded PCI-E on the Dothan.

has anyone ever wondered how much of all this load comes from the filesystem?

mrau wrote on 2020-06-27, 00:55:

has anyone ever wondered how much of all this load comes from the filesystem?

I get over twice the ftp throughput under Linux as I do under Windows 98 SE (46MB/sec vs 20MB/sec). I am writing to the same FAT32 filesystem and CPU usage under Linux is around 70% or so . See my previous post for more precise numbers . Also, considering that, with the ATTO benchmark, I can essentially saturate ATA66 (about 60MB/sec) with my current ATA controller and can reach 90MB/s with a Promise Ultra133 TX2, under Windows 98SE , I feel pretty confident that what is holding me back is total PCI bandwidth and that the FAT32 filesystem access overhead, while obviously a factor in performance, is not what is limiting me (otherwise my ATTO scores would not have been so much higher than the network transfer scores) .

EDIT: Corrected typo. See in bold

I've got myself an Intel Pro/1000-GT network card and made some speed tests with 98SE and XP on my Tualatin 1.4GHz.
On both systems I've run TCP Optimizer beforehand and pushed the slider all the way to the right to optimize the settings for Gigabit connections.

I am transferring a file onto an SMB share that is running with Samba 3.6 (external 2TB harddrive connected to my router).

This is Windows 98SE:

This is Windows 98SE with "interrupt moderation" turned off in the settings for the Intel card:

Slight boost, but not much.

This is Windows XP:

That's a lot faster!
The CPU is only around 50% utilized on Windows XP, which is weird, though.

Maybe the harddrive that's connected to my router is getting maxed out? Or the SMB protocol is badly optimized for speed?
Guess I'll need to run more tests...

If you want good speed do this.
Install TCP Stack 1.4
Install VTCP.386 4.10.2223 "236926USA8.EXE"
Install QFE Hotfix VIP.386 4.10.2228 "Q301453.EXE"

Once you do that You can replace 98se winsock files with windows ME files (MSWSOCK.DLL, MSWSOSP.DLL, WINSOCK.DLL, WS2_32.DLL, WS2HELP.DLL, WS2THK.DLL, WSCTHUNK.DLL, WSOCK32.DLL, WSASRV.EXE, AFVXD.VXD, WSHTCP.VXD, WSIPX.VXD, WSOCK.VXD + WSOCK2.VXD

Then run TCP optimizer.
I can upload the hotfixes if anyone wants but you are on your own with winme files. Also you cannot post them here.

Warlord wrote on 2020-08-08, 09:10:

If you want good speed do this. Install TCP Stack 1.4 Install VTCP.386 4.10.2223 "236926USA8.EXE" Install QFE Hotfix VIP.386 4. […]
Show full quote

If you want good speed do this.
Install TCP Stack 1.4
Install VTCP.386 4.10.2223 "236926USA8.EXE"
Install QFE Hotfix VIP.386 4.10.2228 "Q301453.EXE"

Once you do that You can replace 98se winsock files with windows ME files (MSWSOCK.DLL, MSWSOSP.DLL, WINSOCK.DLL, WS2_32.DLL, WS2HELP.DLL, WS2THK.DLL, WSCTHUNK.DLL, WSOCK32.DLL, WSASRV.EXE, AFVXD.VXD, WSHTCP.VXD, WSIPX.VXD, WSOCK.VXD + WSOCK2.VXD

Then run TCP optimizer.
I can upload the hotfixes if anyone wants but you are on your own with winme files. Also you cannot post them here.

I followed these steps precisely and saw very little improvement. SMB File copy from Windows 10 (with SMBv1 enabled, obviously) to Win98SE went up from ~2.2 MB/s to ~2.5 MB/s peak.
My setup: P3-S 1400 MHz on ASUS CUBX, Intel PRO/100+ network card with relatively recent drivers (8-12-2003). Plain Windows 98 SE with no update packs etc. CPU load is around 20%.

In case anybody else wants to try it, you can get a copy of WinME, then extract the CAB files in the win9x folder. 7-zip works for all of these steps. The files are all in the CAB archives.
For TCPOptimizer, get version 3.08, newer ones won't work on Win98SE.

Im am facing the exact same issue but it must be something else.
Here is the problem: ScenicXS D1215 i815e 10/100 Onboard Intel LAN

Win98se + Network drivers + Intel Chipset drivers 2601(DMA-Checkbox activated) -> Using TCP/IP => copying 8MB/S rock stable! you can copy gigabytes.
WinME + same Network Drivers + Chipset driver 2601 not supported (DMA Checkbox-activated) -> Using TCP/IP => copying start 8MB but slows down avter copy some files to 800KB and stays there. Mouse stuttering clearly a DMA problem

How can this be?...I will try some later Chipsetdrivers perhaps they will work with ME.

There is another issue the opposite way. This is due to some game do not play redbook-audio" within a mounted ISO wth deamon-tools on Win98se but everything works with WinME. Strange.

strangely DX8.1 seems to fix the soundcard issue...so no need to install WinME.