From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Dec 11 06:42:21 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id GAA12620 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 11 Dec 1995 06:42:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from silver.sms.fi (silver.sms.fi [194.111.122.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id GAA12537 for ; Mon, 11 Dec 1995 06:41:53 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pete@localhost) by silver.sms.fi (8.6.12/8.6.9) id QAA14944; Mon, 11 Dec 1995 16:41:22 +0200 Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 16:41:22 +0200 Message-Id: <199512111441.QAA14944@silver.sms.fi> From: Petri Helenius To: Chris Stenton Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Why is my FreeBSD box so slow on local TCP? In-Reply-To: References: Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk Chris Stenton writes: > > > I posted this on usenet but got no reply anyone care to give an answer? > > > I have just run lmbench on my pentium FreeBSD-stable box. > > Ok, I don't expect my box to be as fast as an HP snake but I did not > expect it to be 24 times slower than Linux on Local TCP connections. > Anyone any ideas whats going on, 100 kb/s is not exactly pushing the > boat out? > What's your lo0 MTU? If it's the 16384 that some non-tcp-knowledgeable person put in sometime in the past I think what you are seeing is called "TCP deadlock" which appears when window size is equal or smaller than the MTU. This makes TCP to be stop-and-go protocol (remember XMODEM? or non-windowing kermit) and thus the troughput of the protocol is pretty horrible. This happens on ATM also if you are running with 4096 or 8192 window sizes and the RFC1577 default MTU of 9180. Fortunately not too many applications use the 127.0.0.1 address but use the loopback provided by the ethernet-interface. (and thus get the MTU of 1500) Pete