RH 8.0
Samba 2.2.7-5.8.0
P3-450 w/ 256mb RAM
Windows XP
100mbit switched network
7200rpm drive

I'm copying ~10GB of files via samba to my Linux server. According to Windows Xp Task manager, I'm only getting about 1 megabyte/s of data transfer.

I expected that I would be getting at least 5X that.

SMBD is taking up about 5% CPU and seems to be pushing the load towards the 1.5 - 2 range.

My XP box is showing ~10% CPU utilization.

Any suggestions??

Since the linux box is bored (5% on that
CPU is not a lot) out of its tree I would
think that the XP box is the bottle-neck. ;)

If it's not the case check on your switch
whether both boxes actually have their
100MBit.

Cheers,
Tink

Talk about the power of paradigms -- I was so convinced that it had to be a Samba issue, I never even checked the switch. Sure enough, the NIC is running at 10mbs.

Thanks! (hangs head in shame)

Look mate, if that hadn't happened to me before I'd
never have guessed it either ;) Don't feel embarrassed!

Cheers,
Tink

I couldn't agree more with Tinkster.

I spent an afternoon trying to work out why I was only getting ~1MByte/s over a 100MB lan from a Samba server, then got really concerned when the performance for of FTP over the same link didn't seem much better. Afer a while it dawned on me that I had forgotten to factor a multiple of 8 into my calculations to turn bits into bytes.

Jamie...

heh ... 1MB is pretty bad, though ;)
No switches, swamped in collisions?

I've seen 900K/s on 10MB switched
ethernet, and at work am (nfs) getting
about 9.5MB/s from a Unix-Host. :)

I still think that Ethernet is a piece of
crap conceptionally, and would be very
pleased to continue using my old Token
Ring, maybe upgrade it to TR155 :}

But the hardware is so dear, and switches
make ethernet bearable ;)

I mean: 16MBit = 2MB /s ... I've seen
1.6MB/s on a loaded ring (>850 machines)
That's about 85% of the theoretical max
throuput if there was no packet overhead.

In switched Ethernet it's about 77% ... :)

Cheers,
Tink

Na, there was nothing wrong apart from my calculations missing a multiple of 8. Infact I was really getting just under 9MBytes/s. My inability to handle simple maths really.

Jamie...

Actually samba is not the best protocol in the world, even between windows machines. If you FTP between windows machine the throughput is normally about 85-90% of your media capacity and is always consistent. Use windows networking to drag and drop files and the throughput is anywhere between 50% and 80% of of media capacity, but is inconsistent even with the same file sent twice!

I spent several days scoping this over a frame relay network and had to explain to my customer why his throughput was so variable. He didn't like it when I told him it was due to microsoft networking being shite!!