I’m trying to speed up TCP/IP based file transfers on one of our network segments. I replaced the 100MB Ethernet switch with a Gigabit switch and the connection lights show that all the workstations are connected at full speed. The problem is that traffic between the workstations is still going out to the main network router and coming back during file transfers. Is there a way to get the transfer traffic to go directly between the workstations?
You may be able to accomplish your goal by adjusting the workstation network address settings. IP traffic can be delivered directly by Ethernet between machines on the same physical and logical subnet. You have your workstations connected to the same physical network segment but you need to make sure that the workstation IP addresses reside on the same logical subnet as defined by the TCP/IP subnet mask. If you are not sure whether that is the case you can use one of the many ‘subnet calculators’ available on the Internet to verify that the addresses being used are from the same logical subnet. Once this has been established, it is time to look at the default router settings. You may find that traffic is still sent to the main router first because the workstations have specified that as their default router. A solution that often works in these cases is to define the default router address as the address of the workstation itself. This causes the workstation to deliver packets directly via Ethernet on the local subnet and to look for, and use, the router as the gateway for delivering traffic to other destinations.
