[nzlug] Network speed

[Toby Collett]

I think some more information would be required here. Gigabit Ethernet tends
to approach the limits of 'desktop' computing hardware, so your speed
limitations are most likely coming from somewhere other than your Ethernet
layer. For example a PCI card with 32bits of bus width at 33Mhz gives you ~
1Gbs of throughput in ideal conditions. If your firewall has two PCI cards,
they have to share the bandwidth...ditto on the computers sending and
receiving and who knows what the config inside the switches are, I would
think they are optomised to deliver maximum performance across their ports
not maximum for an individual port.

DISCLAIMER: I have no qualifications or experience to back this stuff up so
there are no doubt many clarifications able to be made.

Toby

On 06/08/07, Andrew Farago <andras_farago at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
> The scenario is the next
> Two Linux PC with Gigabit NICs, connected with Cat 6 cables.
> The maximum throughput what I could measure was 0.55 Gbps. (Download
> or upload but I never did the two tests in the same time, that maybe
> less.)
> If I made it a little more complicated...
> LinuxPC}-------{switch}------{BSD firewall}------{switch}------{LinuxPC
> Gigabit NICs and Gigabit switches everywhere (not cheap ones)
> connected with Cat6 cables.
> A few simple rules and NAT on the firewall.
> The max speed what I got was 0.35 Gbps.
> I am very-very disappointed. I expected much more. :-(
> Is it a week performance or this is the performance of a "Gigabit"
> network?
> Do you have any experience?
>
> The computers in the tests had 3Ghz P4 processors + 512Mb RAM.
> The test program was the netperf+netserver duo and I performed a
> TCP_STREAM test.
>
> Andrew
>
> _______________________________________________
> NZLUG mailing list NZLUG at linux.net.nz
> http://www.linux.net.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzlug
>



-- 
This email is intended for the addressee only and may contain privileged
and/or confidential information