From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Aug 23 22:36:16 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from cygnus.rush.net (cygnus.rush.net [209.45.245.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 35C7315048 for ; Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:36:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bright@rush.net) Received: from localhost (bright@localhost) by cygnus.rush.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id BAA10870; Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:35:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:35:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Alfred Perlstein To: kadal Cc: Wayne Cuddy , FreeBSD Hackers List Subject: Re: network performance vs. linux on small transfers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, kadal wrote: > > > > On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Wayne Cuddy wrote: > > > Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 00:38:21 -0400 (EDT) > > From: Wayne Cuddy > > To: FreeBSD Hackers List > > Subject: network performance vs. linux on small transfers > > > > I am involved in a messaging system at work in which we need to send/receive > > large amounts of small (one line messages) SMTP messages. We are currently using Sendmail 8.9.3 > > on HPUX. > > > > Our application sends messages down a FIFO to a daemon process that is reading from > > the FIFO. This process then connects to port 25 of the destination system and > > delivers the mail via SMTP. Currently the destination system is the local > > system so everything is done on one machine. > > > > Using HPUX we typically pass 5 messages a second. This system is a dual > > 180Mhz K class server so this is surprisingly low performance for this system. > > > > When testing on FreeBSD 3.1 we also got 5 messages a second. This system is a > > 500Mhz P3, this is also unacceptable performance. > > > > When we tested with Linux (kernel 2.2.5) we passed 15 messages a second > > consistently using the exact same P3 described above. > > > > Since the HPUX and FreeBSD numbers are so close I am wondering there is some > > performance tuning that I do not know about. Do you think the number might > > change if multiple hosts were used? > > > > The daemon that reads from the FIFO makes only one connection to the local > > Sendmail to deliver multiple messages in sequence. > > do you really have to deliver the messages sequentially ? SMTP > conversation is rather slow, especially for small messages. > > you may want to try to deliver them simultaneously, by creating multiple > SMTP conversations. > > you may also try other MTA such as qmail, postfix, etc. > > > I REALLY want to use FreeBSD over Linux on this one and need some major help > > to get the performance out of FreeBSD. > > how about profiling your program / system ? try to find where it spends > most time. it could be forking, disk I/O, SMTP conversation, etc. I > strongly suspect that it's SMTP conversation, but can't really sure before > you mesure it. Wild guess, the creation of spool files syncronously is killing performance you may give freebsd a signifigant boost by either: mount -o async -u /var (spool partition) or enabling softupdates, check out: /usr/src/sys/contrib/softupdates/README.softupdates. please tell me how it goes. good luck, -Alfred To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message