[Samba] Poor performance between linux boxes using Samba 3

[Roger Lucas]

I have a network with two machines on it, both running Debian and updated
with the latest Debian stable samba (3.0.14).  Both machines are reasonably
high spec (512MB RAM and Athlon 2200+ processors) and have little else
running (console mode, no KDE/Gnome/etc).  They are connected by a Netgear
FS108 100-Base-T ethernet switch.

 

When I try to copy a large file (500MB) from machine A to machine B using
FTP (Machine B running vsftpd) then I get 9.5 MB/sec throughput, so my
100-base-T network is running at full speed and full duplex, as I would
expect.

 

When I instead try to copy the same file from machine A to machine B using
FTP (Machine A running "smbmount -t smbfs //machineb/share /mnt/machineb -o
user=xxx,password=xxx") then I get much lower throughput - around 3 MB/sec.

 

I have followed the instructions in the HOW-TO and in the smb.conf file and
have the settings below on both machines.

 

The smb.conf has the following line:

            socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

 

Is this throughput normal ?

 

I would have expected similar performance to the FTP, given the spec of the
machines and the fact that both protocols are using TFTP.

 

Thanks in advance.