Samba performance compared to Windows 98

Johann Zuschlag zuschlag at online.de
Thu Nov 2 22:27:27 GMT 2000


Hi Tim,

lets first discuss your results. I don't think the patch would help anyway.


>For a 2 meg file, Win98 get = 13.55 MB/s (odd I know)	Win98 put = 5.82 MB/s.
			Samba get = 11.87 MB/s			Samba put = 5.03 MB/s.

The odd value is NOT the network transfer rate. Its just the cache transfer rate. It is like this:

The first time you copy (get) the file it is cached in the local memory. The second time nothing is copied over the network, it's just emptying the local cache.
Maximum transfer rate on 100Mbit network (using a switch) could be about 6.5-7MB/s. Period. (In fact I meant KB/s and MB/s with my numbers in my former 
mail, typo :-) )
So both get rates are higher than possible due to caching. For testing you should switch off the local cache by using oplocks=no. Check the results.

>For a 21 meg file,	Win98 get = 5.56 MB/s		Win98 put = 4.64 MB/s.
				Samba get = 7.74 MB/s		Samba put = 3.04 MB/s.

Here Samba seems to be a little faster than Win98 during get. No caching to be seen (or just a little?). Try copying a second time and transfer rate will speed 
up (depending on RAM). In fact most linux servers are sligthly optimized for get (6:4 or so?). But you could change that.

Another point is, if you use Netbeui for a pure windows connection, you get faster transfer rates. What were you using? With tcp/ip you are tunneling SMB 
thru tcp/ip which is slower. On the other hand pure tcp/ip is faster. Samba uses tcp/ip only. Usually you get the maximum using ftp. Did you try to ftp?

Hope that helps a little bit. Anyway your transfer rates are not 200% slower. Usualy a Samba machine should have the same rates like an NT server, or 
better.

regards

Johann


Johann Zuschlag
zuschlag at online.de






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