Network Transfer Speeds

[#1]

At work, we have a corporate Domain, running at 100Mbps, although some of the servers are connected at 1Gbps.  One of my machines downloads data to a server, usually the speeds are quite quick, but just recently, data transfer is taking a while. It is taking around 2:40 to transfer approx 45Mb of data to the server, which I think is excessive, but I am not sure how to convert this to network Speeds. I am presuming I have to convert the 45Mb to Megabits, and then divide this by the time taken to transfer in Seconds to get the speed.  Does anyone agree this time seems excessive for a 100Mbps LAN. By my reckoning its running  at around 2-3Mbps, which is what I assume real world speeds on a 10Mbps network would be.  Would be grateful for any advice. 

[#2]

We'll have to read between the lines a bit to work out which are actually bits (b) and Bytes (B)...
(not to mention hours, minutes and seconds)
Assuming you mean it takes 2'40" (160 seconds) to transfer 45 MegaBytes, that's about 2.3 megabits per second.
That is very slow for a 100mbps LAN so is probably limited by the end points - server or PC.
Unless the LAN is totally overloaded, but things would be going badly wrong if it was.

[#3]

Sorrry
The LAN is usual 100Mega bits per second speed.  The File is 45megabytes. time is as you quite rightly say 160seconds.  So you are getting the same figures I do.  I am suspecting the Server end, as I mapped the drive on the device, to my desktop, and dragged and dropped the same file, took 6 seconds to transfer, so thats around 60megabits per second, much more like a 100Mbps network.  Can Network cards Fail, and revert to a slow speed.  I have remoted onto the server, and the speed is set to 100Mbps/Full Duplex, as it should be, and the OS does not detect a fault with the card. I assume it could also be the switch its connected to, or any other switch in the chain, from the device to the server. (Server OS is Win2K server)
Thanks HP

[#4]

This isnt a simple thing and we have had this on the forums before. When you copy fies over a network a lot of stuff comes into play which can effect it. these are
The source and server loads both CPU and disk if either are buzy it will slow it down.
Network traffic server and source but also the network in general especially if you have hubs not switches as it can be swamp.
How its connected via a mapped drive or a UNC path(mapped rive is normally quicker.
How its transfer ie via a GUI, DOS, Software. If it GUI like file manger then there is extra going on refreshing the screen and software overheads(dos is normally quickest)
AV if you have AV running on source and target and they are scannable files  then the source first scans them for virus and then the target scans them again putting a big load on
Setting if you have last time access turned on on both machines that has to update as well.
It can be slowed down by something open on the target if you had file manager open it could be refreshing and also updating thumbnails which is slow.
You need to test at night when no one is on to eliminate the network traffic.
The best tool for the job is Robocopy from
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx Its very fast with lots of options and you can create a script for it to do its job. It will be a lot quicker than any other method