Performance Samba 2.0.6 / FreeBSD 3.4 vs NT and NetWare

[Clarence Brown]

I'm getting samba setup, and it seems to be working. I have PDC/BackupPDC
issues to resolve, and want to change things so the NT PDC authenticates
users instead of setting them up using smbpasswd. Right now, I can access
the samba box from Win98 and WinNT workstation with "manually setup"
smbpasswd's.

I have been testing performance and am a little disappointed, I hoped samba
would be faster. Here are the servers I'm testing against:

Netware 4.10
386 80 MHz
20Meg RAM
SCSI
IPX/SPX

NT4 Server
Pentium 150 MHz
32Meg RAM
SCSI
NetBEUI (Default) & TCP/IP & IPX/SPX

FreeBSD 3.4 / Samba 2.0.6
486 DX2/66 MHz w/ Evergreen Pentium upgrade  (approx 100/133 MHz, at least
faster than it DX2/66 )
64Meg RAM
VLB IDE
TCP/IP

To test I have been copying a directory branch containing subdirectories of
about 74Meg back and forth between  the servers and a Win98 and WinNT
workstation using Windows Explorer. Times below are in MM:SS

NetWare to Win98 (read)	1:40 (consistent)
Win98 to NetWare (write)	1:38 (consistent)
NetWare Erase			0:02 (consistent)

NTServer to Win98 (read)	1:32 (consistent)
Win98 to NTServer (write)	1:23 (consistent)
NTServer Erase			0:02 (consistent)

Samba to Win98 (read)		1:40, 1:45, 1:50
Win98 to Samba (write)		2:00, 3:50, 3:50,
Samba Erase			0:05 (consistent)

The NetWare and NT Servers are consistent, and pretty much the same w/ NT
slightly faster which is understandable given that NetWare is only running
on an 80MHz 386 w/20Meg RAM.

Samba however is consistently slower than both, and its "write" time is much
slower, and quite inconsistent. I was hoping Samba/FreeBSD would be at least
as fast as the NetWare box (which I'm considering replacing w/ the Samba
Box), given that it's running on faster processor w/ more ram.

Samba is being started in inetd. Does this only affect startup time at
login/connection, or all performance time?
Obviously the NetWare/NT times are not affected by processor/memory/or other
hardware bottle necks. I'm using a very simple test smb.conf. I hope to
eventually integrate into the NTDomain better so it gets its passwords from
there, and acts as a BDC, and possibly DHCP too.

# Simple Test smb.conf
[global]
	workgroup = SAMBATEST
	netbios name = SAMBA01
	encrypt passwords = Yes
	guest account = pcguest

[tmp]
	comment = Temporary file space
	path = /tmp

[root]
	comment = full drive
	path = /
	read only = No