Network speeds are a fraction on Guest as they are on Host

[bwittgen]

Hi everyone,

While using Windows 10 guest on a Windows Server 2012 Host, my network speeds on the guest are a fraction of the host:

Host, according to SpeedTest-
Down:899.77 Mbps
Up:935.83 Mbps

Guest-
Down:43.84 Mbps
Up:112.44 Mbps

The guest is using NAT, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop. I've seen others across the internet report success switching NIC's on the Guest, however Windows 10 can't locate the drivers, and I've seen others on this forums say those drivers are old and should not probably be used anyways.

Code: Select all

Name:            WIndows10
Groups:          /
Guest OS:        Windows 10 (64-bit)
UUID:            59da9237-d379-4012-b06a-2d756c6837fd
Config file:     C:\Users\Wittgen\VirtualBox VMs\WIndows10\WIndows10.vbox
Snapshot folder: C:\Users\Wittgen\VirtualBox VMs\WIndows10\Snapshots
Log folder:      C:\Users\Wittgen\VirtualBox VMs\WIndows10\Logs
Hardware UUID:   59da9237-d379-4012-b06a-2d756c6837fd
Memory size:     5749MB
Page Fusion:     off
VRAM size:       128MB
CPU exec cap:    100%
HPET:            off
Chipset:         piix3
Firmware:        BIOS
Number of CPUs:  1
PAE:             off
Long Mode:       on
Triple Fault Reset: off
APIC:            on
X2APIC:          off
CPUID Portability Level: 0
CPUID overrides: None
Boot menu mode:  message and menu
Boot Device (1): DVD
Boot Device (2): HardDisk
Boot Device (3): Not Assigned
Boot Device (4): Not Assigned
ACPI:            on
IOAPIC:          on
BIOS APIC mode:  APIC
Time offset:     0ms
RTC:             local time
Hardw. virt.ext: on
Nested Paging:   on
Large Pages:     on
VT-x VPID:       on
VT-x unr. exec.: on
Paravirt. Provider: Default
Effective Paravirt. Provider: HyperV
State:           running (since 2019-01-10T21:51:42.857000000)
Monitor count:   1
3D Acceleration: off
2D Video Acceleration: off
Teleporter Enabled: off
Teleporter Port: 0
Teleporter Address:
Teleporter Password:
Tracing Enabled: off
Allow Tracing to Access VM: off
Tracing Configuration:
Autostart Enabled: off
Autostart Delay: 0
Default Frontend:
Storage Controller Name (0):            SATA
Storage Controller Type (0):            IntelAhci
Storage Controller Instance Number (0): 0
Storage Controller Max Port Count (0):  30
Storage Controller Port Count (0):      2
Storage Controller Bootable (0):        on
SATA (0, 0): C:\Users\Wittgen\VirtualBox VMs\WIndows10\WIndows10.vdi (UUID: 2f2f
3b15-87e9-4abc-b377-51e19cf22308)
SATA (1, 0): C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (UUID: 1a
648f9c-3c06-4b66-b0ee-3c6149998c46)
NIC 1:           MAC: 0800276F0BA7, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace:
 off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Prom
isc Policy: deny, Bandwidth group: none
NIC 1 Settings:  MTU: 0, Socket (send: 64, receive: 64), TCP Window (send:64, re
ceive: 64)
NIC 2:           disabled
NIC 3:           disabled
NIC 4:           disabled
NIC 5:           disabled
NIC 6:           disabled
NIC 7:           disabled
NIC 8:           disabled
Pointing Device: USB Tablet
Keyboard Device: PS/2 Keyboard
UART 1:          disabled
UART 2:          disabled
UART 3:          disabled
UART 4:          disabled
LPT 1:           disabled
LPT 2:           disabled
Audio:           enabled (Driver: DSOUND, Controller: HDA, Codec: STAC9221)
Audio playback:  enabled
Audio capture: enabled
Clipboard Mode:  Bidirectional
Drag and drop Mode: Bidirectional
Session name:    GUI/Qt
Video mode:      1680x959x32 at 0,0 enabled
VRDE:            disabled
USB:             enabled
EHCI:            disabled
XHCI:            disabled

USB Device Filters:

<none>

Available remote USB devices:

<none>

Currently Attached USB Devices:

<none>

Bandwidth groups:  <none>

Shared folders:

Name: 'D_DRIVE', Host path: 'D:\' (machine mapping), writable
Name: 'E_DRIVE', Host path: 'E:\' (machine mapping), writable
Name: 'F_DRIVE', Host path: 'F:\' (machine mapping), writable
Name: 'G_DRIVE', Host path: 'G:\' (machine mapping), writable
Name: 'H_DRIVE', Host path: 'H:\' (machine mapping), writable

VRDE Connection:    not active
Clients so far:     0

Capturing:          not active
Capture audio:      not active
Capture screens:    0
Capture file:       C:\Users\Wittgen\VirtualBox VMs\WIndows10\WIndows10.webm
Capture dimensions: 1024x768
Capture rate:       512 kbps
Capture FPS:        25
Capture options:    ac_enabled=false

Guest:

Configured memory balloon size:      0 MB
OS type:                             Windows10_64
Additions run level:                 3
Additions version:                   5.1.22 r115126

Guest Facilities:

Facility "VirtualBox Base Driver": active/running (last update: 2019/01/09 19:46
:11 UTC)
Facility "VirtualBox System Service": active/running (last update: 2019/01/09 19
:46:24 UTC)
Facility "VirtualBox Desktop Integration": active/running (last update: 2019/01/
09 20:04:13 UTC)
Facility "Seamless Mode": active/running (last update: 2019/01/09 19:46:11 UTC)
Facility "Graphics Mode": active/running (last update: 2019/01/09 19:46:11 UTC)

Let me know if I missed an important detail and I will try to fill it in.

[bwittgen]

Bump, if I left something out or did something wrong when making my post, please let me know and I can correct it.

[andyp73]

Nothing much wrong with your posts other than perhaps taking screen shots and attaching them rather than the links to the speed test results.

This is a user to user forum and so if no-one provides an answer it typically means that no-one knows what the cause of the problem is nor how to solve it. What might help is if you can post the VBox.log file for the guest in question.

I have probably now tempted fate or offended the gods or some such and there will now be many answers to make me look stupid!

-Andy.

[bwittgen]

Thanks for the reply, Andy! Some forums people will ignore newbie questions sometimes if they're annoyed with a common they mistake they made, so I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

[bwittgen]

Here's another article of folks reporting issues, but I haven't gotten a solution to work for me yet.

url deleted.

[bwittgen]

Bumping this

[arQon]

Newbie questions are fine, but it's rude to keep bumping threads on ANY forum when you're not adding information or trying to resolve things yourself. That aside...

The problem is with your setup, not (directly, at least) VirtualBox. *I* can't tell you whether it's your host, your guest, your settings, etc, let alone the fact that you appear to be testing against a random *remote* site. But on a W7 host / Ubuntu guest combo here (and on fairly old hardware at that) :

Code: Select all

$ rsync -av /mnt/nas/iso/ubuntu-mate-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso /tmp
...
sent 1,636,538,571 bytes  received 35 bytes  69,639,940.68 bytes/sec

or to use the same units as you, ~590Mb/s at the link layer. Which is certainly a fraction of the 960-ish I can get on the host, but it's a reasonably *large* fraction at least.

To get you started:
* Try searching the forums in case someone else has done measurements with your host/guest combination.
* The Intel NIC driver is the slowest of all options on at least most platforms if not all, but I have no idea how much worse it is on Windows. It should only be a few percent worse, but try the other ones. At the very least you should be able to use the virtio driver, even on W10.
* If at all possible, test against a server that's local and has known performance. A NAS, another PC, whatever. Not the Internet. Use robocopy/etc.
* Look into the NAT parameters for the VM. Read the manual. Again, a search of the forums will find at least one thread documenting how large an impact those can have.

My WAG is that your problem is at least partially just bad harmonics with the server, but hopefully you'll be able to work it out with a little effort. Good luck.

[AdrianB1]

The guest is using NAT, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop. I've seen others across the internet report success switching NIC's on the Guest, however Windows 10 can't locate the drivers, and I've seen others on this forums say those drivers are old and should not probably be used anyways.

Try other options, like NIC types and also try bridged and see how the performance goes.If you have problems with the drivers for other NICs, just add a second NIC that is the Intel Desktop one, this way you will have Internet connectivity from the working one while you get the driver for the other one. This is how I did for the Intel MT Server NIC and it worked. Also bridged should be faster.
Also look at the jumbo frame on the guest and host network; the immediate effect is the number of hardware interrupts (lower with Jumbo frames) that have quite an impact in virtualized environments. Never did benchmarking, but I can tell it is close enough to the host network performance.

[yanpain]

Greeting there, I had the same issue with a Win10 Host / NAT mode / Intel Pro 1000 MT virtual adapter type / centos8 guest
I changed the Adapter type to something else than Intel Pro 1000MT, in my case : Paravirtualized Network ( adapter type )
and it did it, now getting same speed as on the host Win10
I read a report on another forum saying they fixed it choosing another type as well, always reporting that the default type
Intel Pro 1000MT seems to be the problem , causing bad performance on the guest

for the record ..
cheers !