stevea
2007-01-02, 01:43 PM CST
I just assembled a new high-end system for my office/lab/playpen and I decided to test networking performance on all the iron I keep powered up, including some dual-boot systems. These are all gigabit enets connected on a LAN with a Netgear GS108 switch (older model, no jumbo packets). I was once again distressed at how miserable the Windows network stack performance is.
The first test transferred a large amount of synthetic data (16GB, no file system I/O) between systems using ttcp. I also transferred this synthetic data to the local system using the "lo" interface. Without producing a spreadsheet let me summarise the data by saying my 2.6Ghz P4 HT workhorse system with an Intel e1000 attached to the N.bridge was able to transmit UDP at 27MB(B=byte)/sec under Windows and 117MB/s under FC6. My new company laptop Dell Latt D620, T2400 Yonah @1.86Ghz, & a smokin' broadcom enet chip) hit 37MB/s under Windows, 116MB/s under FC6. Note that 1000Mbit/s ~= 117MB/s.
When I copied data back to themselves (which avoids the Gigabit wire limitation and the 802 encapsulation) the Workhorse got 78MB/s under Win2k & 481MB/s under FC6 (6x faster). The Dell Laptop got 138MB/s under WinXP & 1382MB/s under FC6 (yeah 10 times faster !!!). *Obviously* the problem is in the MS stack and not the low level chip drivers.
So then I tried some real file transfers by various methods and the outcome was unsurprising. Linux was limited by the disk & file system speed (hdparm -t reports about 55MB/s) when transferring between Linux systems using either ftp or an "nc" script. "scp" slowed the transfer rates to abt 33MB/s, and an NSF file system transfer could only get 11.4MB/sec (lousy).
The Windows systems were often limited by their "stack speed", however I should note that Windows can reliably(tcp) receive packets of synthetic (dropped) data at ~85-105MB/s (tcp), same as the Linux receive rates. They just cannot send packets very fast.
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So I have a problem and a question, but it really belongs on a Windows forum.
I end up needing to transfer large amounts of data from Windows to Linux regularly. I just transferred 22GB today , and this took 35+ minutes with filezilla & ftp. I can transfer that same amount of data under Linux in ~7.5 minutes (limited by source file system accesses). Anyone know any Win network tweaks ? Ntfs has lousy read performance with ntfs-g3, but rebooting twice would still be faster than this 35 minute timeout.
As much as I dislike ftp, it wins the performance race (within the LAN only please).
Ther is little value in purchasing a gigabit switch that handles jumbo packets if you send data from Windows. It seems it can only hit ~~30%-40% of the wire performance. out of the box.
enjoy, -S
The first test transferred a large amount of synthetic data (16GB, no file system I/O) between systems using ttcp. I also transferred this synthetic data to the local system using the "lo" interface. Without producing a spreadsheet let me summarise the data by saying my 2.6Ghz P4 HT workhorse system with an Intel e1000 attached to the N.bridge was able to transmit UDP at 27MB(B=byte)/sec under Windows and 117MB/s under FC6. My new company laptop Dell Latt D620, T2400 Yonah @1.86Ghz, & a smokin' broadcom enet chip) hit 37MB/s under Windows, 116MB/s under FC6. Note that 1000Mbit/s ~= 117MB/s.
When I copied data back to themselves (which avoids the Gigabit wire limitation and the 802 encapsulation) the Workhorse got 78MB/s under Win2k & 481MB/s under FC6 (6x faster). The Dell Laptop got 138MB/s under WinXP & 1382MB/s under FC6 (yeah 10 times faster !!!). *Obviously* the problem is in the MS stack and not the low level chip drivers.
So then I tried some real file transfers by various methods and the outcome was unsurprising. Linux was limited by the disk & file system speed (hdparm -t reports about 55MB/s) when transferring between Linux systems using either ftp or an "nc" script. "scp" slowed the transfer rates to abt 33MB/s, and an NSF file system transfer could only get 11.4MB/sec (lousy).
The Windows systems were often limited by their "stack speed", however I should note that Windows can reliably(tcp) receive packets of synthetic (dropped) data at ~85-105MB/s (tcp), same as the Linux receive rates. They just cannot send packets very fast.
======
So I have a problem and a question, but it really belongs on a Windows forum.
I end up needing to transfer large amounts of data from Windows to Linux regularly. I just transferred 22GB today , and this took 35+ minutes with filezilla & ftp. I can transfer that same amount of data under Linux in ~7.5 minutes (limited by source file system accesses). Anyone know any Win network tweaks ? Ntfs has lousy read performance with ntfs-g3, but rebooting twice would still be faster than this 35 minute timeout.
As much as I dislike ftp, it wins the performance race (within the LAN only please).
Ther is little value in purchasing a gigabit switch that handles jumbo packets if you send data from Windows. It seems it can only hit ~~30%-40% of the wire performance. out of the box.
enjoy, -S