XP needlessly buffering network transfers

[zwachter]

By default windows seems to utilize all available memory to cache/buffer (not sure of the correct term) files being transferred over a network share. I suppose this should theoretically speed things up, but not when the network restricts you to a small upload limit.

(e.g. when the network is your bottleneck, you get the same transfer speed with 128mb Ram or 1GB Ram, but Windows doesn't recognize this and will needlessly waste 800mb of the 1GB buffering the file being transferred)

Is there any setting I can change to stop XP from pointlessly whoring RAM when people download stuff off my server?

[zwachter]

top, because I refuse to believe the ocforums can be stumped.

[Adragontattoo]

Is it possible that it is more due to the amount of activity said people are doing and not the size of the file?

[cw823]

What NIC are you using?

[zwachter]

Thanks for the replies, here's some more info:

using an Nvidia Nforce Networking controller.

The college I'm running things at has the network set to allow 8mbps max uploading within your dorm's building, and then to any other campus building it drops to about 500kb/s max. From testing, I max out the connection regardless of if I have 256mb, 1GB, or 2GB of RAM in. The problem is that Windows will use whatever free RAM you have to buffer the files in advance, which is pointless since I already max out when its using <256.

[Incesticide]

It's just a part of the caching algorithm. Is it affecting your performance? Probably not. If you really want to stop this "inefficiency," go to system properties > advanced (tab) > performance options > advanced (tab) > and check programs under memory usage. This will decrease the chances of this buffering happening. But really, you don't want to mess with this behavior. If your system needed the ram for something more important, it would use it for that instead. It is buffering it in case someone else wants the file. Odds are the most requested files will be the most requested, right?

edit: If it's really a problem, you can always send the ram to me!! :bday:

[Neuromancer]

z0mgz!

I was totally wondering why all of a sudden my PCs were making HDD buzzing noises all the time. I thought maybe a virus since Task Manager showed no processes actively running while the HDD was zipping.

Reforemat and reinstall and still there.

Somehow I totally forgot that I ALWAYS set static IP. Going to have to try it and see if that helps :) (been running dynamic lately)

Prolly wont help you... but your thread sparked a thought and figgered I would thank you for it :)