[see attachment for an amazing download speed] 47 MB / sec! And thats not even maxing out the network, so 2 people can download at that speed (one per hard drive)... Unreal Tournament 2004 (2 GB) transfers in less then 1 minute!!!!

Apache (in our old implementation) limits download speed so multiple users can download at the same time nicely, but when you only have 2 hard drives and large files, the hard drive performance suffers from random reading.... instead it is best for one person to max out the server for a short time (linear reading) and free the hard drive for a new user...

meet, FTP server!!... We are now using one apache server to host the website, and two FTP servers to host the actual files on two separate hard drives. Free open source ftp client and server, http://filezilla-project.org/
WS_FTP,etc is terrible in comparison to this software, so nice!

Now, for those of you who are interested, a dedicated PCIe network card is the best of the best, and i recomend Intel server ones. The one in the server cost 40$ at canada computers, and i managed to get a synthetic benchmark of 880 Megabit/1000 = 110MB/s which is pretty decent (will post picture later). My laptop's integrated gigabit network card can only push out about 275, and my desktop can do about 750 on its integrated. This intel nic is a much smarter choice then some "hyped up" gaming network cards like the KillerNIC series.. and PCI(regular) are a joke for gigabit, as they will never give you close to real gigabit speeds. PCI shares its bandwidth with lots of other hardware.

-Kevin

Update: i got a benchmark of 927 Mbit = 116 MB/s... laptop + desktop both connected to the servers Intel card w/ Cat6 over our Netgear 16 port switch. http://www.maclanclub.com/images/927_benchmark.jpg
Our current harddrives are not nearly fast enough for that, we need more funding to get a SSD.

Also, i made a startling discovery.... the Realtek RTL8112 chipset built into the Asus M2A74-AM motherboard in the server got 915 Mbit between my motherboard onboard (8111C chipset) without my laptop being connected in parallel.... so its actually just as fast as the dedicated card... perhaps its CPU/RAM limited at this point, maybe a quad core could get the card at 975 Mbit and the onboard may be stuck at 915...who knows...

Realtek has picked up its socks, and its new pcie based chipsets are actually good. My laptop has the older 8169/8110 and it struggles to get 250 Mbit!

Also, Cat6 is better shielded and at a higher frequency then Cat5e.... but in fact, a 50ft cat5e cable cut into three and soldered back together and 60ft industrial cat5e performed just as good as a 10ft cat6. So don't bother spending more on Cat6 unless your in a high EMF area or using PoE....