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Date:      Fri, 17 Dec 1999 17:45:15 +0100
From:      Martin Welk <mw@theatre.sax.de>
To:        death <death@southcom.com.au>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DFE-530TX NIC - fast receive, slow send
Message-ID:  <19991217174515.A46333@theatre.sax.de>
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.19991217205117.00a1d7e0@mail.southcom.com.au>; from death@southcom.com.au on Fri, Dec 17, 1999 at 09:06:11PM %2B1100
References:  <4.2.2.19991217205117.00a1d7e0@mail.southcom.com.au>

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On Fri, Dec 17, 1999 at 09:06:11PM +1100, death wrote:

> I get great sends from the windows box to FreeBSD. FTP and samba get 
> 3.5MB/s, which maxes out the dodgy 1GB slow HDD that FreeBSD has - it 
> thrashes constantly until the file transfer is done. Network benchmarks on 
> the windows box tell me 8.5MB/s. The cards are running in Full-Duplex 
> 100Mbps along a 10 metre CAT 5 UTP cable.
> 
> Unfortunately though, sends from FreeBSD go horrendously slow. Both FTP and 
> samba only send at 500KB/s at the most. Usually averaging around 250KB/s.

It's always the same, it's just a shame, that's all...

Okay, it took me about three or four ours going through Samba and FreeBSD
documentation, but at least I found the possibility to increase the send
and receive buffer sizes Samba uses.

I did so and *tadaaaa* a highly noticeable better write performance from
Windows (in that case, NT) to FreeBSD.

In that smb.conf, I have

socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=262144 \
SO_RCVBUF=262144

I use that large buffer size because the machine has plenty of RAM and
there are at least about 10 Windoze boxes up and running all the time.

> I was reading through the mailing list archive and found somebody who had 
> the exact same symptoms as mine - fast receives, but slow sends, and ftpd 
> sending data in bursts every few seconds. But i couldn't find the solution 
> to his problem.

Why didn't you find any of my previous answers with the same content?
(Maybe it was in comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc, I think.)

> vr0: <VIA VT3043 Rhine I 10/100BaseTX> rev 0x06 int a irq 11 on pci0.18.0
> vr0: Ethernet address: 00:80:c8:d8:19:b7
> vr0: autoneg complete, link status good (full-duplex, 100Mbps)

Check for CPU usage, those cards are rather cheap with good performance,
but for server machines there are better (and more expensive) ones like
Intel EtherExpress.

Somewhere on the FreeBSD mailing lists I read that there was a patch for
better performance within the latest Samba port for FreeBSD. I haven't
found something significant within that port, and I did a cvsup yesterday.

As I never got an answer on my question, why increased socket buffers
aren't a default (at least on FreeBSD, because the problem you describe
appears again and again and again), I got no answer yet. Is the some
risk for stability or security or something else?

BTW, with two FreeBSD boxes with much memory (256 mbytes and 512 mbytes)
and Intel EtherExpress network cards, I usually get 10 mbytes/sec. through
the network (connected to a full-duplex switched hub) when there are no
disks involved (from the cache to /dev/null with files > 150 mbytes).

Regards,

Martin
-- 
 /| /|        | /| /            ,,You know, there's a lot of opportunities,
/ |/ | artin  |/ |/ elk                     if you're knowing to take them,
                                  you know, there's a lot of opportunities,
Freiberg/Saxony, Germany                 if there aren't you can make them,
mw@sax.de / mw@theatre.sax.de          make or break them!'' (Tennant/Lowe)


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