FASTER : connection via NETBUI or TCP ?

['chris']

hi

know someone, which one is it faster:

connection via NETBUI or TCP ?

I mean in LAN.

for example to download a big file
from NT share.

kind regards
chris

[Jay Bollyn]

Chris,

I don't know the specific answer to your question, but I can tell you that I don't even think about NETBEUI anymore, and I am an old-timer. I am focused on TCP/IP, particularly IP6.

:-) Jay

[Jon Finley]

TCP/IP will be faster overall.

NetBEUI is broadcast based, so is a VERY noisy protocol.

Jon

['chris']

Hi John

What do you mean with "VERY noisy" ?

[Jerome Henry]

He means that when using Netbios /Netbeui on a LAN, each machine is anouncing itself along with the services it holds (printer sharing, file sharing, workgroup, ...) every ten minutes, and each time a machine starts or stops on the LAN... Adding on that Netbeui is layer 5 and not routable, so it makes problem if you have a router on your LAN.

For this reason (bandwidth consumming), TCP/IP is considered as faster.

Besides, using TCP implies error correction, which guaranties that your eceive all the packets, in good shape... no time loosing on getting malformed packet and trying to get something from them...

hth

J

[Jay Bollyn · Accepted solution]

Chris,

I would like to expand on the points Jon and Jerome mentioned.

There is no simple answer to your question, because we don't know enough about your particular LAN. The answer to your specific question depends mainly on the size of your LAN (5 PCs or 500?)

I have had a chance to search Google for reference documents. Here is a link to an excellent comparison of NT network protocols from the MS Knowledgebase. The main drawback of this article is its age: It was written when NT ver.3.5 was current, so keep this in mind as you read it:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?M20C53F26

Toward the end of the document, note the 5 bullet points under "Performance", also the Summary grid at the very end of the doc.

So to make a long story short, if you are talking about a home or small business LAN of 10 PCs or fewer, NetBEUI might be faster than TCP/IP, because NetBEUI is optimized for small LANs. On small LANs, routeability and broadcast traffic are not very important. They become important as the size of the LAN increases, and the LAN infrastructure becomes more complex.

Even if you were to see a speed advantage of NetBEUI over TCP/IP, I would encourage you to go with TCP/IP. NetBEUI has had its day; TCP/IP is the protocol of the future. So if you have network problems or questions in the future, there will be more people willing and able to help with TCP/IP issues.

:-) Jay

['chris']

I have 300 PC's at my network.

[Jerome Henry]

Wow !
So there is no chance that you use only one subnet. This confirms that TCP/IP is not only faster, but also easier...

If you want to know more about Netbeui, the samba team issued a quite clear explanation. Read at :
http://ftp.easynet.be/samba/docs/using_samba/ch01.html
(read Understanding NetBIOS).

J

['chris']

I have symantec ghost (version 8.2) und use it in a switched network.

I've done a test:

I've created 2 ghost floppys:
one over the NetBios and second one over TCP/IP,
the same hardware and the same switched LAN (ca. 150 clients)

ghost server -> WIN2000 Server SP4 with NetBEUI protocol installed
client -> WIN2000 SP4
image -> ca. 2,2 GB

over NetBios was 3 times faster !!!

greetings
chris