TCP/IP Slowness (was win98 vs win95 with TCP/IP)

[Eddie Irvine]

Hi,

I had similar problems with Samba and speed. To begin with, I thought
it was a Samba problem, and spent a lot of time stuffing around with
smb.conf   Then, just to make certain it was Samba and not a generic
TCP/IP problem, I tried ftp'ng a big file to and from the Samba server
from W95.  Speed was only 20 k/sec - about 2% of the expected speed of
a 10-Base-T network.

Same for FTP'ng from W95 to out mac fileserver.

After a little more investigation, I dug out the DOS setup software for
the ethernet cards (generic NE2000 compatabile) and changed the
transmision setting to from "Full Duplex" to "Simplex" (also known as
"Half Duplex"). I changed this on W95 and the Samba box.

Rebooted both boxes, and viola! File transfer sped up to 800 k/sec.

Of even more interest, our Mac fileserver on the same net stopped its
intermittent crashing as well.

In my smb.conf I only have one setting to increase speed - I can't 
remember exactly what it is, but it is something like "TCP No Delay".
No other optimisations were made.

This whole simplex/duplex thing with cheap ethernet cards seems to be a
common problem. It may be worth your while to invest in a top quality
ethernet card, such as the Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100 

You might like to check out

http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/eirvine/hermione/hermione.html

Anyhow, let me know how you get on.

Eddie.