*BSD News Article 34595


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From: csgr@cs.ru.ac.za (Geoff Rehmet)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Whats wrong with Linux networking ???
Date: 19 Aug 1994 20:46:05 GMT
Organization: Rhodes University Computing Services
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Message-ID: <3335me$do3@quagga.ru.ac.za>
References: <Cu107E.Mz3@curia.ucc.ie> <CuMF14.BH@gnome.co.uk> <33289oINN4l4@bonnie.sax.de>
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In <33289oINN4l4@bonnie.sax.de> j@uriah.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes:

>jacs@gnome.co.uk (Dr Chris Stenton ) writes:

>>IMHO I dont find NFS on FreeBSD(1.1.5.1) that great. If I NFS mount any
>>other unix box other than a PC box I have to use a block size of 1k.

>It's said that 16-bit Ethernet boards do not suffer from this syndrom.

I'm using NFS quite extensively in with FreeBSD 1.1.5.1.  I am using
16bit SMC ethernet cards, which give very good performance.
NFS reads give 500K/sec to 650K/sec (if your very lucky) between 2
1.1.5.1 boxes, and writes are 100K/sec to 150K/sec.  (according to
iozone.) -- 500 to 500K/sec is generally typical.
I haven't been able to test things much, but a FreeBSD 2.0 client seems
to get slightly better performance than a 1.1.5.1 client -- this will
need more testing though, as my 2.0 system is shaky at best at the
moment.
I am getting similar (and generally slightly better) transfer rates
when the FreeBSD boxes are served by either a Sun IPC or a SS10-512.

a critical factor is to have a fast ethernet card, where Western
Digital clone cards (preferably 16bit) give the best performance.

As far as TCP performance goes, a machine like this rates roughly
equivalent to and sometimes slightly better than a Sun IPC, and miles
better than a SparcClassic.
The NFS performance is not quite as good as a Sun IPC.

Geoff.
--
 Geoff Rehmet, Computer Science Department,   | ____   _ o         /\
  Rhodes University,  South Africa            |___  _-\_<,        / /\/\
 FreeBSD core team                            |    (*)/'(*)    /\/ /  \ \
     csgr@cs.ru.ac.za, csgr@freefall.cdrom.com, geoff@neptune.ru.ac.za