Re: Network throughput too low?
On Wed, Jul 11, 2001 at 07:04:16PM +0200, Mart van de Wege wrote:
> Folks,
>
> A minor question, possibly OT: for some reason I'm getting a very low
> network throughput between my laptop and my desktop machine. I just ran a
> test with netpipe-tcp, and the maximum speed is some 15Mbps. As I have a
> 3Com 905C in the desktop box and a 3Com 574 PCMCIA card on the laptop
> (both are 10/100 NICs) I would have expected a bit more speed here. Also,
> my laptop complains about dropped interrupts during the test, and a quick
> look with ifconfig shows that it is having buffer overruns. Is this
> related? Anyone got a clue as to what is going on and how I can boost my
> network performance?
>
I suspect a driver issue.
Some NIC's are better supported than others under Linux. Perhaps the
biggest reason for this is the varying degree of support that Linux
recieves different the chipset manufacturers.
People who need/want/demand near theoretical peak performance from fast
ethernet under linux are usually rather picky about the NIC's they use.
Back in ancient times, when dinosaurs roamed, and there was a company called
DEC who made a processor called Alpha, the "Tulip" was the chip of choice.
I really have no idea what the performance champion is wrt stuff you can
actually buy today, but im told that
inexpensive Realtek based cards are perhaps the best bang for the buck.
Suggested possible approaches:
Upgrade your kernel, hence your nic drivers if you are not using a fairly
current kernel, and keep an eye on release notes of new kernels as they
are released.
Or, change your hardware.
Or, just deal with it.
Other possabilities: cable issues, router/switch issue
Good luck
Mike
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