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Date:      Wed, 18 Sep 2002 10:55:27 +1000
From:      David Burns <david.burns@dugeem.net>
To:        Steve Fettig <lists@stevenfettig.com>
Cc:        net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Network Transfer Speed Issues - Tweaks/Advice?
Message-ID:  <3D87CEFF.1010409@dugeem.net>
References:  <DEC874D3-C763-11D6-9524-00039384AB84@stevenfettig.com>

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Steve Fettig wrote:
> 
> I recently set up an NFS server to run daily backups on.  The server was 
> built using an old P150 w/ 90 MB of ram and a 6GB hard drive.  (All 
> servers in this experiment are set up using FBSD 4.6.2 and the client is 
> a Mac PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X.)  Attached to it is an external 
> SCSI hard drive enclosure with 4 47GB SCSI drives running off an 
> AHA-2490UW SCSI adapter.  I am getting really odd performance when doing 
> an NFS transfer (I also get odd performance out of scp) from the machine 
> I am trying to back up.  I will get a burst of 20Mbps for about 30 
> seconds, then it will ramp down to 1 Mbps for about 2 minutes, ramp 
> backup to 20 Mbps, then back down to 1 Mbps and so on.  
> 
You need to break the problem down ... Is the system CPU and/or IO bound 
during the backup? Also try some quick benchmarks to verify basic system 
performance levels: Network IO - use ttcp (or netperf etc), and Disk IO 
- use bonnie (or similar).

NB Of course you can't simply take such benchmarks results and put them 
together - but you will gain a better understanding of where the 
potential slowdowns may be.

Lastly, performance issues on older Pentiums can also result from poor 
memory bandwidth and/or PCI chipset problems. I recently replaced a P120 
with a Celeron 333 - the performance improvement was surprising.

Regards,
David


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