Network speeds?

[Bodo]

I am just transferring 18.5GB of music files (3700-ish) to an NFS server in my home network. NICS are both 10/100, and so is the switch they're connected to. The switch is uplinked to another switch, which is part of a switch/router combo.

CPU load and memory usage are well under 50%, on both server and client.

The shown transfer speed is between 3.0...3.5MB/sec

Appears a bit slow to me. Do they all do that?

[Mark.S]

Closer to 9mb/sec here (100mbit cards through adsl router/switch).

[onedsla]

Are you using windows copy & paste? You may get a lot more speed out of a tool like robocopy.

I get much much quicker transfer speeds on a similar setup.
Dave

[squirrelz]

Is everything set to auto sense?
Auto sense is naff, and often ends up with a mismatch.

If everything is 100 Mbit full duplex capable, then fix it at that setting if you can.

How recent are the hard drives involved? older HDs were only capable of that kind of transfer rate.

[agent006]

Remember, you network caed measures in Bits, and windows measures in bytes

8 bits in a byte

[Bodo]

I'm using the shell command cp, both machines are Linux.

The server runs a 7200rpm h/d on UDMA66, the client has a 7200rpm ATA133 RAID 0. The read/write access is 3200kb/s on both computers.

Possible weak links could indeed be one of the network cables. I'll connect the computers with a crossover cable to see how they do without the rest of the network links

[squirrelz]

Perhaps use something other than an NFS mount to transfer data, just to clear that from the list of possible problems? FTP instead to compare transfer rates, even if you don't want to use it as the final solution.

[Bodo]

Cheers squirrelz! How do I enable the ftp service on the server? SuSE is firewall'ed by default.

[squirrelz]

Sorry, don't know about SuSE - Mandrake is my poison of choice, and it comes with proftpd.

I just editted /etc/proftpd.conf and used chkconfig to enable it.

Then whatever you're using as a firewall, you need to tell it to permit ftp.

[Bodo]

I installed pure-ftpd, started both inetd and the ftp service
Speed remained the same though.

[squirrelz]

Well at least you know it's not anything to do with NFS. See how you go on with the crossover cable, and don't forget to fix the NICs at 100meg full duplex.

[JamieBeeston]

small files rarely copy over very fast, as it takes alot of time for the os to switch to the next file in the list etc, try zipping them up,, with zero compression (for speed) then moving the muvva of a zip file over, will bet dollars to dogsnuts that its faster.

could also be cheapy NICs, just as a nic is rated at 100mbit, doesnt mean it will run at 100mbit (just will connect at 100mbit)

Also, IDE drives will slow down the cpus when under load (but you already said cpu isnt an issue)

I would say blame lies somewhat in its lots of small files, and somewhat in shatty Network Cards (ditto hub to an extent)

[Bodo]

squirrelz, I don't know how to force the NICs to do 100Mbit full duplex. I can't find any GUI tool for that; however I've found a command on the net how to check speeds:

{client}

• bulldog:/home/bodo # mii-tool eth1

• eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok

{server}

• lagonda:~ # mii-tool eth0

• SIOCGMIIPHY on 'eth0' failed: Operation not supported
  no MII interfaces found

• lagonda:~ # ethtool eth0

• No data available

(But not for the server's NIC. It identifies with Davicom 10/100 after lspci)
Does it have something to do with options set in /etc/modules.conf? Couldn't find parameters for Davicom on the net
I might pull the bugger out, and put a newer NIC in , before I proceed with the crossover cable

Jamie, I tried that with a zip-file: via NFS, the indicated speed was 3.0MB/s; and via ftp, the indicated speed was 4600 k/s

[JamieBeeston]

eth0 is the prefix for intel cards (Etherexpress) other cards can be rl0 (or 1 or 2 etc) ed0

ifconfig -a will show you what cards you have in there.

[Bodo]

JamieBeeston said:

eth0 is the prefix for intel cards (Etherexpress) other cards can be rl0 (or 1 or 2 etc) ed0 ifconfig -a will show you what cards you have in there.

Yes, did that before. Server has only one NIC, so SuSE calls it eth0, client has two nics, from which eth1 is connected to the network, and eth0 serves other purposes

[Mikej]

Bodo,

To force the speed of the NIC you will usually find that if you go to Device Driver, select the appropriate Network Adaptor and look at it's properties - you will probably find a number of tabs to select one of which will include something like advanced on which you can select the speed.

Cheers,

Mike.

[Bodo]

Alright chaps, I've fitted a new Tulip-chipset NIC into each computer, created an 192.168.1.x net, plugged a 3m crossover cable between them, and the average speed for 18.5GB rised to 7.2MB/s rather than 3.0...3.4MB/s

Thanks all for your help