Slow transfer from desktop, regardless of protocol

Shade · 02-11-2004, 12:25 AM

I tried searching around about this, but can't seem to figure it out.

Specs:
Slack 9.1
AMD Athlon 2200XP +
Onboard Via-Rhine NIC
Linksys Wireless G router

Protocols tried:
scp
ftp
http (apache)
Gaim instant messenger file transfer

Problem --

Transfer speed from the desktop seems to max out at 20KB/sec, no matter what protocol, or file size.
Download speeds to the pc are fine, NIC is operating in 100BaseTX Full duplex mode.

When I transfer large files from laptop to desktop over wireless, the speeds can reach 900KB/sec...
Seems that I can't transfer from the desktop any faster than 20K/sec.

Any ideas?

--Shade

root@gobot:/home/mike# mii-tool
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
root@gobot:/home/mike#

adz · 02-11-2004, 02:46 AM

Does the output of ifconfig show anything?

Shade · 02-11-2004, 05:25 PM

Nothing unusual...

Code:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0B:6A:04:F9:99
          inet addr:192.168.1.13  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:71220 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:69411 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:37808443 (36.0 Mb)  TX bytes:37631570 (35.8 Mb)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0xdc00

adz · 02-11-2004, 05:55 PM

Do you have an DSL connection using PPPoE? If so you may try changing the MTU to 1492. If that doesn't work keep lowering it and see if you get an increase in speed. It's a bit of a long shot but it might work.

Shade · 02-11-2004, 06:10 PM

Nope, no dsl connection.

This is just transferring files over local area network between desktop and laptop... From desktop, to router through cat5. From router to wireless card in laptop.

--Shade

adz · 02-11-2004, 06:25 PM

Oh sorry I got this thread confused with another one. Do you have another OS you can test it on? Like windows or another linux/unix OS?

Shade · 02-11-2004, 11:55 PM

Nah, I don't.

I could boot up knoppix and try...

adz · 02-12-2004, 05:44 AM

There's an idea. That might solve something but then again maybe not. I take it you're using the via-rhine kernel module? I googled around and it seems there is some known wierdness with it. I didn't really think it could be the case since it's such common hardware but others seem to be having problems as well. Specifically, they mention slow-downs during high speed transfers (~100Mb/s) which may sound familiar. It seems to happen especially on SMP systems and the theory is that a race condition occurs between the card and the other CPU for hard interrupts. I assume you have a uniprocessor but maybe you have an SMP kernel? The threads I came across also seemed to say that specifying the "noapic" kernel option made this problem go away. I'm not sure what it will do for you since (once again I'm guess that) you have a uniprocessor and therefore have no actual hard interrupts doing anything.

Have a google/linux around for "via rhine nic" (whithout the quotes) to see what I saw.

[edit]: Oh and check your /var/log/syslog for any eth0 related errors. Specifically something like "Something wicked happened" or some variant. Many people reported that too.