[Samba] Weird Samba upload performance on Gigabit network - resolved with new NIC

[David Harrison]

On 13/11/2006, at 8:23 AM, David Harrison wrote:

>>> Here's a weird one that may have nothing to do with Samba and  
>>> more to do with network frame sizes.
>>> I have recently upgraded the network infrastructure to support  
>>> gigabit speeds.
>>> - OSX Tiger to OSX Tiger file transfers operate at gigabit speeds.
>>> - Samba 3.0.23C (Suse 10) to OSX Tiger file transfers operate at  
>>> gigabit speeds.
>>> - BUT OSX Tiger to Samba 3.0.23C (Suse 10) file transfers operate  
>>> at 1-2meg/second which is well down from expected performance.
>>> The strange thing is if I begin a file transfer from OSX Tiger to  
>>> Samba and in a terminal window on OSX begin an SCP copy operation  
>>> to the same Suse server the file transfer speed of Samba jumps up  
>>> to gigabit level speeds. As soon as the SCP copy operation is  
>>> stopped the Samba file transfer process drops to 1-2meg/second  
>>> again.
>
> Yes I am running 10.4.8 on the clients.
> Just as a test I have mounted the Samba volume from the command  
> line (with mount.cifs and mount.smbfs) and received the same  
> performance as through the Finder so if the problem is with 10.4.8  
> its at a fairly low level.

I replaced the network card on the Suse box from the Netgear card  
(r8169 driver) to a HP NC1020 (tg3 driver).
Samba performance is now at gigabit levels and is very consistent  
with multiple Linux (Suse) and OSX (10.4.8) clients.
The Netgear card appears to operate okay as a Samba client on another  
machine but still performs poorly when the Samba process is receiving  
large quantities of uploaded data.


David