suffering from poor network performance...

[Charles Swiger]

On Dec 17, 2003, at 9:34 AM, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> I've not tried the ping but I'm seeing exceptionally poor
> performance on G4s to FreeBSD.  The G4's can ftp to each other
> at about 8-9MB/sec, as can the FreeBSDs.  They are on a Cisco
> 2948 switch.  But ftp from BSD to G4 is in the order of 20-40KB/sec
> while G4 to FreeBSD is about 1/2 that.
[ ... ]
> And I have NO problems with pings. Just data transfer.

Your description sounds a lot like a duplex mismatch.  Cisco switches 
and Macs sometimes mess up autonegotiation; I've seen the same happen 
with Sun hardware as well.  If you get a chance, try manually 
configuring both the switch port and the Mac NIC to 100/HD rather than 
using auto.

[ Yes, you should be able to test them explicitly configured for 
full-duplex, too, but testing at half-duplex is appropriate to confirm 
or deny my guess. ]

If that doesn't buy you anything, try using "ping -i 0.01 -s 1400..." 
to send large packets rather than tiny ones, and take a look at your 
port statistics on the switch for errors, and whether "netstat -i" 
shows something interesting.

-- 
-Chuck

PS: My apologies if "diagnosing FreeBSD network problems" is off-topic 
to those who are interested in "coding network-related parts of 
FreeBSD".  On the other hand, coercing developers to look at usability 
issues every once in a while can be beneficial to all concerned.  :-)