From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 2 18:15:46 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94F0016A4CE for ; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:15:46 +0000 (GMT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D2F643D31 for ; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:15:46 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id iA2IEvef021515; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 13:14:57 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)iA2IEviG021512; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 13:14:57 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 13:14:56 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Emanuel Strobl In-Reply-To: <200411021905.08044.Emanuel.Strobl@gmx.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: asymmetric NFS transfer rates X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 18:15:46 -0000 On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Emanuel Strobl wrote: > It's a IDE Raid controller (3ware 7506-4, a real one) and the file is > indeed huge, but not abnormally. I have a harddisk video recorder, so I > have lots of 700MB files. Also if I copy my photo collection from the > server it takes 5 Minutes but copying _to_ the server it takes almost 15 > Minutes and the average file size is 5 MB. Fast Ethernet isn't really > suitable for my needs, but at least the 10MB/s should be reached. I > can't imagine I get better speeds when I upgrade to GbE, (which the > important boxes are already, just not the switch) because NFS in it's > current state isn't able to saturate a 100baseTX line, at least in one > direction. That's the real anstonishing thing for me. Why does reading > staurate 100BaseTX but writes only a third? Have you tried using tcpdump/ethereal to see if there's any significant packet loss (for good reasons or not) going on? Lots of RPC retransmits would certainly explain the lower performance, and if that's not it, it would be good to rule out. The traces might also provide some insight into the specific I/O operations, letting you see what block sizes are in use, etc. I've found that dumping to a file with tcpdump and reading with ethereal is a really good way to get a picture of what's going on with NFS: ethereal does a very nice job decoding the RPCs, as well as figuring out what packets are related to each other, etc. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research