Ethernet Questions?
Andrew C. Ohnstad
slower than the other direction?
I have 2 machines connected via Ethernet. 1) DEC Alpha running RH 5.2
(kernel 2.0.35 for now) with the built in Tulip comparable driver. 2) A
Windows 98 machine with a Netgear 310TX.
Copying a 2 Meg file from Win 95 to Linux takes about 10-15 seconds. The
link lights on the hub look like they are on crack. The collision light
is on more than it's off, but the file gets there right quick.
Copying the same file from the Linux box to the Win 98 box takes about 2
minutes. The link lights blink steadily, about 4 or 5 times a second.
No collisions, but damn if it doesn't take forever.
Any ideas? I was planning on using the Alpha/Linux box as a server for a
small (8 computer) network, but not if it's this slow...
=-=Andrew
cc: by e-mail <an...@andysaudio.com> always appreciated
Jan Geertsma
> link lights on the hub look like they are on crack. The collision light
> is on more than it's off, but the file gets there right quick.
>
> Copying the same file from the Linux box to the Win 98 box takes about 2
> minutes. The link lights blink steadily, about 4 or 5 times a second.
> No collisions, but damn if it doesn't take forever.
This is a commonly known windows shortcoming, this occurs also between to
windows machine's. Nobody really has an answer, but my problems disappeared
when tweaking the MTU settings on the windows machines. Use a program like
TweakDUN or Netlightening to be found at tucows (www.tucows.com)
mem...@yahoo.com
Ohnstad) wrote:
>What could cause file transfers going one direction on a network to go
>slower than the other direction?
>
>I have 2 machines connected via Ethernet. 1) DEC Alpha running RH 5.2
>(kernel 2.0.35 for now) with the built in Tulip comparable driver. 2) A
>Windows 98 machine with a Netgear 310TX.
>
>Copying a 2 Meg file from Win 95 to Linux takes about 10-15 seconds. The
>link lights on the hub look like they are on crack. The collision light
>is on more than it's off, but the file gets there right quick.
>
>Copying the same file from the Linux box to the Win 98 box takes about 2
>minutes. The link lights blink steadily, about 4 or 5 times a second.
>No collisions, but damn if it doesn't take forever.
>
>Any ideas? I was planning on using the Alpha/Linux box as a server for a
>small (8 computer) network, but not if it's this slow...
I have seen something similar, but it seems to be a windows
problem not an alpha/linux prob. If I do controlled tests
with an x86 box running windows I see what you describe. If
I boot the x86 into linux and do the same thing, there is
no problem. The file goes back and forth without any perceptible
difference in data rate.
Uh oh, I didn't think to ask are you ftp-ing the file or running
a samba server/client setup or what?
Georg Acher
I've also seen such an asymmetric behavior, but with Linux-Alpha<->Linux-x86.
It turned out, that the termination and/or the ethernet cables (coaxial) were
broken. Exchanging terminators and cables solved the problem.
--
Bye
Georg Acher, ac...@in.tum.de
http://www.in.tum.de/~acher/
"Oh no, not again !" The bowl of petunias
Bill Kent
rather than a built in TP connection, make sure your SQE is ???. I
can't remember if it should be on or off if you're connecting to a
repeater (hub), but switch it if you can and see what happens.
Andrew C. Ohnstad
> I have seen something similar, but it seems to be a windows
> problem not an alpha/linux prob. If I do controlled tests
> with an x86 box running windows I see what you describe. If
> I boot the x86 into linux and do the same thing, there is
> no problem. The file goes back and forth without any perceptible
> difference in data rate.
>
> Uh oh, I didn't think to ask are you ftp-ing the file or running
> a samba server/client setup or what?
Admittedly I was a little vague on my original post, it was late, I was
tired, blah, blah...
The two boxes are connected by Cat 5 cable and a Linksys 5 port hub. The
Win machine is running 98, with a Netgear 301TX. The Alpha has it's
built in DEC chip card. The cables are new Belkin, though if I can beg
buy or borrow another pair from anywhere I'll try swapping them out.
The machines are set up as the Alpha/Linux being a server with samba
installed. The Alpha is running 2.0.35 (soon to be .36, and possibly
2.2.something later on). Samba is at version 1.18p10.
Here is a good example of what is going on...
D:\Installations>ftp
ftp> open headunit
Connected to headunit.loftnet.net.
220 headunit.loftnet.net FTP server (Version wu-2.4.2-academ[BETA-18](1)
Mon Jan
18 22:33:28 EST 1999) ready.
User (headunit.loftnet.net:(none)): andy
331 Password required for andy.
Password:
230 User andy logged in.
ftp> type binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> lcd
Local directory now D:\Installations.
ftp> get webmin-0_65_tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for webmin-0_65_tar.gz (1058203
bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 1058203 bytes received in 144.67Seconds 7.31Kbytes/sec.
ftp> put webmin-0_65_tar.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for webmin-0_65_tar.gz.
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 1058203 bytes sent in 1.27Seconds 833.23Kbytes/sec.
ftp>
But it happens when dragging and dropping in Explorer (several Samba
Shares are mapped to drives) saving large files from within programs,
etc.
For goodness sake I really don't want to load NT on the Alpha, but
7.31Kbps is totally unacceptable. The friggin file is just barely over 1
Meg. 2 and a half minutes? I get better thru put from my T-1. Makes me
want to just put all my machines on the Internet and transfer everything
over FTP!!!
This is really driving me nutso. I'll play with the card settings
tonight until I get tired of rebooting. Anyone remember the Reg Key that
the MTU is under?
Grr.
=-=Andrew
Tobias Reckhard (jester)
Ohnstad) wrote:
>But it happens when dragging and dropping in Explorer (several Samba
>Shares are mapped to drives) saving large files from within programs,
>etc.
>
>For goodness sake I really don't want to load NT on the Alpha, but
>7.31Kbps is totally unacceptable. The friggin file is just barely over 1
>Meg. 2 and a half minutes? I get better thru put from my T-1. Makes me
>want to just put all my machines on the Internet and transfer everything
>over FTP!!!
>
>This is really driving me nutso. I'll play with the card settings
>tonight until I get tired of rebooting. Anyone remember the Reg Key that
>the MTU is under?
I'm having asymetric behaviour in my home LAN, too, consisting right
now of two Windows boxes ('95 and '98) and a Linux server. The Windows
machines are a P90 and a P2/233, equipped with DEC 21041 compatible
PCI 10mbit Ethernet cards, the Linux box is a 486dx33 (8 megs RAM)
with an ancient WD8003 8-bit ISA NIC. Originally, we got something
like 20 to 40 kbytes per second reading and writing to the shares.
Then I fiddled around with some smb.conf settings (like socket
options, read raw, read prediction, send and receive buffers, etc..),
which improved the situation a bit, but not that much. The biggest
boost has been achieved by changing the settings of the NICs on the
Windows machines, I set the burst length to 4 DWORDS and the number of
receive buffers to 32. Now I get around 280 kbytes/sec when reading
the shares and around 340 kybtes/sec writing to them. Not that great,
but I attribute part of it to the lousy WD - I suppose I could test
that NE2000 clone that's in another computer and see if it's faster..
I also noticed strange behaviour when I was screwing around with the
may xmit option in Samba's (1.9.18p10, BTW and IIRC) configuration
file, I'd had it at 32768 and went down to 2048, achieving better
performance along the way, from 220 recv, 280 send at 32768 to 340
recv, 280 send at 2048. Then I modified the send and receive buffers
in the socket options and one of the transfer rates plumetted down to
80 (this is all in kybtes/sec). I changed the socket options again,
but the mediocre transfer rate remained.. Now I've got max xmit set to
65536, send and receive buffers at 8192 and the values I noted in
smb.conf are 340 recv, 290 send. I think I really should try that
other NIC..
Tobias
Shana Tackett
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19980706S0015
That said, no changes were made to the kernel or the networking code out of
the box to get maximum network and OS performance, he said. "The main
performance bottleneck in machines of this type are the networking
protocols," said Warren. "The performance in Linux has been remarkable.
We're getting full wire speed through Fast EtherNet. You couldn't get more
speed by tweaking."
I have a small network with Win95, WinNT and Red Hat 5.1 and I have never
had problems transfering
up to 100Mb worth of data.
Andrew C. Ohnstad wrote in message ...
>What could cause file transfers going one direction on a network to go
>slower than the other direction?
>
>I have 2 machines connected via Ethernet. 1) DEC Alpha running RH 5.2
>(kernel 2.0.35 for now) with the built in Tulip comparable driver. 2) A
>Windows 98 machine with a Netgear 310TX.
>
>Copying a 2 Meg file from Win 95 to Linux takes about 10-15 seconds. The
>link lights on the hub look like they are on crack. The collision light
>is on more than it's off, but the file gets there right quick.
>
>Copying the same file from the Linux box to the Win 98 box takes about 2
>minutes. The link lights blink steadily, about 4 or 5 times a second.
>No collisions, but damn if it doesn't take forever.
>
>Any ideas? I was planning on using the Alpha/Linux box as a server for a
>small (8 computer) network, but not if it's this slow...
>
Jonathan Brewer
> Shares are mapped to drives) saving large files from within programs,
> etc.
>
> For goodness sake I really don't want to load NT on the Alpha, but
> 7.31Kbps is totally unacceptable. The friggin file is just barely over 1
> Meg. 2 and a half minutes? I get better thru put from my T-1. Makes me
> want to just put all my machines on the Internet and transfer everything
> over FTP!!!
>
> This is really driving me nutso. I'll play with the card settings
> tonight until I get tired of rebooting. Anyone remember the Reg Key that
> the MTU is under?
>
> =-=Andrew
I found that moving to Samba 2 brought about a tremendous performance
boost. I don't remember where I found an alpha rpm for it, and I
couldn't find it at ftp.samba, so I uploaded my copy of it to this
location: http://www.idir.net/~jbrewer/files/ Good Luck!
-JB