Howdy again -
This brings to mind a weird event in our classes.
While doing different installs (an NFS, an SMB, and an FTP), we've seen
slowdowns and/or lockups of FTP installs and transfers on 100 megabit using
RTL8139 cards. The SMB and NFS installs go just fine. It happens like
this:
Machines student1, student2, and student3 are installing from machine
instructor. If all three are using NFS or SMB, no sweat. But if we use
FTP, the first machine (say student1) hums along just fine, but student2
and/or student3 slows down or stops completely.
When we started testing it, we found that on machines that were already up
and running, FTP caused the same kind of choke. If student1 gets
linux-2.2.12.tar.gz (only about 13 megs) from instructor, all is fine and
the transfer is fast as heck. But if all three of the student machines try
to get the file at the same time, one, two, or even all three of them choke.
If we issue /etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop and then /etc/rc.d/init.d/network
start, we can start the transfer again from the student machine and it runs
like crazy unless multiple machines transfer.
The choke does not appear to occur in NFS or SMB transfers. I don't think
that it is a server problem, because I don't have to do anything to the
server, just restart networking on the client. The problem occurs in plain
old command line ftp as well as ncftp and gftp. I have tried the nic driver
as a module and compiled into the kernel.
So do y'all think this is a nic driver issue, or an ftp client issue? Or
neither?
Just thought it was weird, figured I'd see what others thought.
Thanks!
Thomas Cameron, CNE, MCP, MCT
Three-Sixteen Technical Services, Inc.
Linux training in Austin, Texas! http://training.three-sixteen.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Doug
> McLaren
> Sent: Monday, September 13, 1999 6:53 PM
> To: Michael Rice; Patrick Goetz
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Ethernet Cards
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 13, 1999 at 05:35:12PM -0500, Michael Rice wrote:
>
> | > Has anyone seen any stats or comparisons which rate 100Mb
> ethernet cards
> | > (reliability, speed, and cost in that order of importance) when used
> | > specifically in linux systems?
> |
> | just third hand, someone mentioned a group writing software to run on a
> | large distributed system that rated several network cards.
> |
> | For high sustained traffic (larger packets, I believe they said), the
> | Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 cards topped their list. For
> smaller packet
> | sizes they favored the Tulip based cards (I believe Kingston
> and one other
> | brand was mentioned).
> |
> | sorry I don't have a reference handy
>
> Me neither, but I've found tulip based cards to be big winners. Under
> Linux, they're fast, cpu efficient and cheap - I've recently gotten
> them at CompUSA for $25-$10 rebate (Netgear FA310TX. Got two of them,
> and they're both working great.)
>
> Oddly enough, they have Linux drivers on the floppy. It's just a copy
> of tulip.c, so you've already got it, but that's still kind of neat,
> in a perverse sort of way.
>
> Don't know about the EtherExpress Pro 10/100 cards.
>
> --
> Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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