Subject: RE: [netatalk-admins] AS IP speeds

From: Bob Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 20:47:07 -0800 (PST)

System:	Compaq Proliant 5500
	200MHz PentPro
	256M RAM
	Triple UltraWide SCSI
	RAID using 2 UltraWide SCSI
	100M Ethernet (full duplex)

OS:	Solaris 2.6 Kernel patch level 09
	netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.1.1

Network:Fully switched 10/100

I can understand _some_ performance degradation for the dual file
model that is used to support the Mac filesystem but I don't believe
that it would cause a severe slowdown in a Unix system that is capable
of handling thousands - if not millions of simultaneous file accesses.
I have a dual PentPro system with 37G of stripe handling a full Usenet
feed, expiring 4 times daily and serving several *hundred* readers and
it more than keep up. It has (at any given time) more than 4.7 million
files in 65000+ directories and is accessing thousands of files
simultaneaously from hundreds of independant processes. I just don't
buy that Unix can't handle writing or reading to 2 files efficiently.

On a quiet server an 8MB file will take 16-17 seconds to copy from a
G3/300 Mac 8.1 system using AppleshareIP (not Appletalk/Ethertalk). The
*same* file can be transfered to the same system fromthe same client
using Fetch in 3 seconds! The performance degradation with netatalk is
suprising. Granted netatalk is faster than CAP but its still *way*
slower than it could be.

The worst part of this is that a WinNT box running Appleshare using
Appletalk/Ethertalk can perform the same transfer of the 8MB file in
about 6-8 seconds! Less than half the time and using a less efficient
protocol, Appletalk. Its embarrassing to say the least.

Is there anything that can be done to improve netatalk performance?
The pressure is on to switch over to - ugh - NT :(

---
Bob Atkins

---

From: Hannu Krosing <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1999 12:27:44 +0200

> The pressure is on to switch over to - ugh - NT :(

On my similar Dell/linux 2.0.34 box we get speeds about 5-8 MB/sec

And after switching from NT we don't even use the second processor,
the reason being that the linux driver had some compatibility problems
with 
dells onboard 3com card in SMP mode.

I'll revisit the dual-processor issule once linux 2.2 final is out.

from your numbers it looks like you are not using IP on your Solaris
server.

------------------
Hannu

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From: a sun <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 00:43:54 -0800 (PST)

didn't i say something about this in the past? in any case, here are
the speed bottlenecks as far as i can tell and solutions to them:

    1) copying lots of small files. the appleshare client will
       actually intersperse FPEnumerates between its copies to keep
       the directories up to date. FPEnumerate, of course, runs around
       opening and closing lots of files. that's not good. as i
       already have database code for dids, i will be adding a
       per-directory cache that should turn it into an
       open/extract/close for an entire directory.

    2) we still do read/writes from buffers. this isn't actually a
       major bottleneck as the FPEnumerate one is probably far more
       serious. however, i already have sendfile() stubs in
       netatalk. i haven't finished implementing them because linux
       doesn't currently have the c library support. in any case, this
       will turn copies into a read/write 8K and then sendfile() call.

    3) standard ide drives bite. don't use them if you want good
       performance. even low-end scsi drives do better. ultra dma does
       better as well. basically, you don't want your ethernet card
       and your disk to fight. when comparing AFP/tcp to AFP/ddp, it's
       usually good to do an ftp transfer as a test case. AFP/tcp
       should actually perform similarly to the ftp. if you see sucky
       ftp performance and better AFP/ddp performance than AFP/tcp
       performance, it's most likely due to a crappy drive/network
       setup. 

    4) if you're using a 100BaseT network, update to mac os 8.5(.1)
       immediately. networking performance for earlier versions of the
       mac os sucked as well. this is also a case where AFP/ddp could
       end up being faster than AFP/tcp.

-a

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From: Sak Wathanasin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 15:43:25 +0000

In reply to Bob Atkins's message of the 07/01/99 at 20:47 -0800,

> suprising. Granted netatalk is faster than CAP but its still *way*

There's something very wrong if you're only getting 0.5 Mbytes/sec over 100 BT.
I  get 0.8 - 1 Mbytes/sec over 10 BT, and I only have a P200 with an old,
narrow SCSI disk.

Also make sure that you really connecting over ASIP: select the mounted vol on
the desktop and do a "get Info" in the Finder. It wil say "Where: .... via
TCP/IP" or "Where: ... via AppleTalk".

Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited
178 Wainbody Ave South, Coventry CV3 6BX, UK

Internet: [email-masked]
Phone: (+44) 1203 419996                    Fax: (+44) 1203 690690