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slipperyfish
06-24-2004, 09:44 AM
Hello :)

Having set up my first, simple lan the other day, I'm having problems with slow or stalled file transfers.

Before I explain further... my setup is:
One VIA KT266A based system using the onboard ethernet, running Mandrake 10.0.
One nforce2 based system using the onboard ethernet, running both Mandrake 10.0 and Slackware 10.0rc2.
Connected together via a PTI PAE-CE84 (generic conexant) ADSL modem/4 port router using DHCP.

I have been using sftp and scp (from the ssh package) to get and put files from one computer to the other. I have done this from each computer and to a point it works either way.

However, transfers from the nforce machine to the VIA machine never go beyond about 370KB/s and average about 240KB/s, which seems a bit slow to me when I'm using 10/100 gear, but at least this is useable. In the other direction though, transfers from the VIA machine to the nforce machine usually just stall. They start for maybe 10 seconds or so at around 30KB/s before tailing off to under 10KB/s for around another 20 seconds before just stopping. Interestingly i can individually transfer a lot of small (30KB) files and it's fine but if i transfer a lot of small files in one go then it stalls. If i try to transfer just one small file after canceling a larger, stalled download then i cannot....

The setup of the VIA system has stayed the same throughout my attempts. On the nforce system I have used both Mandrake and Slackware and I have used both the forcedeth and official nvnet drivers for the onboard ethernet under Slackware. Neither distro or driver change make a difference. I have also disabled the firewalls on both systems (with the adsl cable pulled out of the router of course ;) ) which made no difference. It makes no difference if I'm getting or putting or use scp not sftp. I'm using IP Adresses not domain names. Ifconfig shows no collisions. Neither system has any problem using the internet.

I am a little frustrated, please help... I have no idea where to start so even just a few ideas as to what it could be would be very much appreciated.

thank you

happybunny
06-24-2004, 10:34 AM
i would first start with duplexing issues...

do a

ethtool eth0

and see what speed and duplex each NIC is at.

Morphine Drip
06-24-2004, 10:35 AM
I dont have a direct answer to your problem; however, since both of your machines are behind the router/firewall you could skip the encryption all together by using NFS or SAMBA. If unsecure transfers is an option i would shoot for one of those. samba, more or less, if you wanted to eventually share files between a windows machine.

slipperyfish
06-24-2004, 07:17 PM
This is the output of ethtool on each machine. I hope this means more to you than to me ;) I'm off to see if I can find out what effect different duplex settings would have...

VIA machine's ethtool eth0 output
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 10Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: off
Current message level: 0x00000001 (1)
Link detected: yes

nforce2 machine's ethtool eth0 output
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: Not reported
Advertised auto-negotiation: No
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Link detected: yes

happybunny
06-24-2004, 09:21 PM
nic one is set to

Speed: 10Mb/s
Duplex: Full


nic two is set to

Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full

not sure what these means to your situation since they are both set to full duplex which is what i suspected as the problem (if they were at half duplex).

You might try setting them both to 100/full but I know from experiance hubs do not react well to non-auto negotiated speeds. But its a place to start.

slipperyfish
06-25-2004, 06:31 AM
I changed VIA nic to :
speed: 100Mb/s
autoneg: on
both together and separately, i also tried half duplex just for fun. Unfortunately no difference was made. I also tried dropping down the speed on he nforce2 nic just to see if it would make any difference but the operation was not supported.

at least I'm learning a few new things ;)
Thanks for the ideas...