Gigabyte speed - Is it real.

[deranged]

Well that was a bummer,

Basically don't use jumbo packets in a mixed network, and of course our network is highly mixed. And there is no way I am going to be able to segment off devices with jumbo packets on thier own subnet. 80 percent of our traffic is from VPN's, which I would doubt supports jumbo packets.

I think more research is required on my part on the rest of the office equipment, It really stinks taking over a network you had no say in design,equipment or implementation. And the motto that they breath is "cheaper is better".

StevenE

 

[deranged]

Just in Case anyone is interested, I just recieved new drivers yesterday from HP and Intel.

And now the servers have a throughput in the high 700's. The tcp window is set at 130k and jumbo packects is not enabled.

I tried a larger tcp window size and there wasn't any difference.

CPU usage does hit 50% percent under the heavy load.

StevenE

 

[Stinger]

Thanks for the update!

The new drivers from Intel- Are they released? Also, did you disable Jumbo packets because of the mixed enviornment? Could you get over 700 with Jumbo packets on point to point?

 

[deranged]

The drivers came to me from HP for the Intel cards. ( they came in the server preinstalled and have been HP branded ).

Yes, I did not enable jumbo packets because of the Mixed network, since a lot of traffic is Wan and 100mb based to and from these servers. After doing some research I came to a personal conclusion that Jumbo Packets would no be effective in this enviroment. I did a little testing that did seem to support my conclusion.

I do not have a window anymore to make changes on the servers for testing. So I have not enabled Jumbo packets to see if the speed would increase. The HP guy I spoke with yesterday did tell me on his 2 test systems ( identical to mine as they where duplicating the problem ) that he did get in the 900's.

He did state that the current intel drivers is what I just recieved, just modified to work with the HP monitoring software. Ver 10.0 for the Intel Server adapter pro/1000 MT.

Steven

 

[Stinger]

Thanks again. I did download the 5/2/05 Intel Pro MT Version 10 drivers, but am still seeing under 500Mb. I haven't had a lot of time to test, but I'm hoping to get a bit more. Not that I really need it, but it's always fun to understand the technology.

Great work Deranged!

 

[deranged]

No matter what I try I cannot get that speed out of my workstations at home, Even with Jumbo packects. ( borrowed the cisco switch from work over a weekend ).

I am not using intel server adapters at home, wish I had a couple to try just to see what difference it would make.

I get better performance on the workstations with the built in Broacom Extreme Nics. A little less than a 100Mb more compared to the Intel Cards.

I don't really need the speed either, it just bugs me..
StevenE

 

[electron]

There is an article on SlashDot.org about a new $500 ethernet card and I found one of the comments rather interesting:

by holysin (549880) on Tuesday June 21, @12:20AM (#12869454)
(http://slashdot.org/)
If you have a machine (say on a machine running linux kernel 2.4.20-30.9smp) with a built in gig port (say with eth0 identified as eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95704A6) rev 2003 PHY(5704)] (PCI:66MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT) connected to a decent gigabit switch, and another machine (same card, same os)with a gigabit card, those two machines will achieve 940Mbps talking to each other (results via iperf, 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 940 Mbits/sec).

However, if you plug a windows box (2000 or xp, didn't have a 2003 handy) with either an add on card, OR built in gig (2000 vs xp) you get a rather less impressive figure of 550-630. Coincidentally, you'll get the same basic number if you run two instances of iperf on the same computer... This tells me the bottleneck isn't the PCI bus, it's the OS. If you can prove me wrong please do so...

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153391&cid=12869454

 

[deranged]

Geee, Those numbers sound somehow familiar.

Hmmmm. Microsoft OS Slow ?
Never crossed my mind.

I have found through my pursuit of data transfers, that windows SERVER 2003 seems to have much higher ratings than that of windows xp or server 2000.
2003 still has only reached 700+ Mb range

It's really unfair to say that because the hardware isn't identical, but I have now tested enough different scenarios and that seems to be the average results.

Steven