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Re: Question on performance

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Albertson)
Thu Aug 15 17:31:44 1996

From: chris@topdog.pas1.logicon.com (Chris Albertson)
Date: 	Tue, 13 Aug 96 17:13:07 PDT
To: buttice@elecomm.net
Cc: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu

This is a good question. "where is the overhead?"

I just did a test between two Sun SPARC workstations running SunOS
and got a much faster rate:

   ftp> get junk.tar
   200 PORT command successful.
   150 Binary data connection for junk.tar (137.51.114.9,1116) (3962880 bytes).
   226 Binary Transfer complete.
   local: junk.tar remote: junk.tar
   3962880 bytes received in 3.5 seconds (1.1e+03 Kbytes/s)
   ftp> 

These systems are on a little used 10baseT network also.  I never see
speed less then 800KB/sec form Sun to Sun but from MS Windows to Sun
it is much slower the 500 more like 200.  I get about 500 between
two high-end Linux PCs also.

Our Sun technical rep said that Suns can push data close to the ethernet
"wire speed" but PCs only get about 1/2 this rate.  This advice was in the
context of planning a network of Sun servers and mixed Sun/PC clients.

So what is Linux doing?  

--Chris Albertson

  chris@topdog.logicon.com                     Voice:  818-351-0089  X127
  Logicon RDA, Pasadena California               Fax:  818-351-0699



> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I have never been able to get more than 500KB transfer rate between any
> of my PC's, Is this normal ? 
> 
> I have about 5 pc's running Linux 1.2.13 mostly P5's with >= 16meg Ram 
> and ISA 3ccom 3c509TP cards. The network traffic is very light and my
> tests are done when no one is working. I have done transfers using ftp
> and tcpspray but the results are simular. 
> 
> Dropped packets is 0 and I look at this at a regular intervals. So the
> network looks healthy. I understand that the theortical transfer rate is
> 10Mbits and pratical rate is less but again 500KB I find is slow.
> 
> Can someone tell me where the over head is ??  the ISA bus shouldn't be
> and neither the card.
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> Emanuele.
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Emanuele Buttice 
> Email: Buttice@elecomm.net
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 

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