Expected network throughput on Mediator?

[Heiroglyph]

My system is an A4000 060/50/96MB, Mediator, Realtek 8139D and Radeon 128MB with 93MB used for fast RAM.

I'm running Roadshow for TCP. (I love it so far, well worth the price)

When I use AmiFTP to transfer files from my server (local server, gigabit, fast RAID and CPU) I only get about 780,000 cps whether I transfer to RAM: or a hard drive.

I've done a few of the Roadshow tweaks mentioned in another thread, is there anything Mediator specific that can be adjusted?

Is this normal? It seems really low for 100Mb.

[Heiroglyph]

I found something of use on eab, a netio benchmark from matthey using an 060/75 and Mediator.

NETIO - Network Throughput Benchmark, Version 1.32
(C) 1997-2012 Kai Uwe Rommel

TCP connection established.
Packet size  1k bytes:  2033.78 KByte/s Tx,  321.98 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size  2k bytes:  405.09 KByte/s Tx,  574.51 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size  4k bytes:  723.33 KByte/s Tx,  766.37 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size  8k bytes:  1320.06 KByte/s Tx,  876.72 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size 16k bytes:  1618.56 KByte/s Tx,  1356.06 KByte/s Rx.
Packet size 32k bytes:  1644.96 KByte/s Tx,  1663.01 KByte/s Rx.
Done.

I'm not sure my setup will actually complete the test, it seems to stop, but not lock up.

With the tweaks given here http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=751014&postcount=48 it just stops after giving Packet size 1k bytes:  923.34 KByte/s Tx and never seems to finish Rx.

Removing all the tweaks gives:
1K bytes: 901.88  KByte/s Tx,  946.49 KByte/s Rx.
2K bytes: 1067.00  KByte/s Tx,

Then it just stops again.

Edit: it seems that after running netio, Roadshow is no longer functional. GetNetStatus looks good, but not even ping will complete, it just sits there with no crash.

[Heiroglyph]

I uninstalled Roadshow and installed Genesis (yuk)

It will now complete the test and has somewhat better performance, but still crap. It also locks the machine when I go offline The machine was incredibly stable prior to this.

1k: 1375 tx, 184 rx
2k 147 tx, 272 rx
4k 275 tx, 276 rx
8k 510 tx, 531 rx
16k 946 tx, 835 rx
32k 1004 tx, 868 rx

And on FTP I get 1,138,000 cps.

I've tried two different realtek cards with no change and two different versions of the FastEthernet.device

[Heiroglyph]

Changing the 10/100 card for an 8029 and still using Genesis gives me:
1k  843 tx, 446 rx
2k 231 tx, 427 rx
4k 400 tx, 654 rx
8k 551 tx, 651 rx
16k 599 tx, 739 rx
32k 703 tx, 714 rx

FTP gives 982,000 cps.

In many cases, that's actually an improvement.

WTF?

[Heiroglyph]

Thanks for chiming in.

Hi Heiroglyph,

My ENVARC:Mediator variables:

FastEthernet 0
MMU YES
VoodooInt YES (may be different depending on gfx board)
VoodooMem 30 (I have a Voodoo 4 so this will likely be different for you)

Ethernet = 0

I have no MMU variable and MedConfig isn't asking me about one. I'll manually set it and see what happens.

Edit: Setting MMU didn't seem to change anything.

The Radeon Memory is set to 32 and RadeonMemOS = YES.

Library and device versions:

Libs:68060.library 43.4 Mu/MMU.lib from ThoR
Devs:Networks/FastEthernet.device 1.25
Libs:pci.library 9.7
Libs:Picasso96/Voodoo.card 4.34

Note that some of my versions are older because of new bugs.

I'm using the same 060 library and fast ethernet device.

My PCI library is 9.10 though.

Genesis isn't that bad is it? It has a GUI with a choice of ClassAct or MUI and it is fast.

My Genesis prefs:

(Interface tab)
Name: FastEthernet
Comment:
IP Address: 192.168.0.100 (static)
Destination:  (dynamic)
Gateway: 192.168.0.1 (static)
NetMask: 255.255.255.0 (specify)
MTU: 1500
Params:

Mine is set the same, plus your suggested changes from the eab thread, increasing the send and recv buffer sizes.

Thanks,
John

[Heiroglyph]

Yes, the directions have changed over the years but my old config still works. It's probably not the best for a new Radeon Mediator setup though.



I had problems with the new pci.library 9.8+. The screen will lose sync while using some Warp3D programs (Alan Thellier's Cow3D for example). I don't know if this would be a problem with 2D apps or the Radeon driver but there was at least one bug introduced after pci.library 9.7. The new pci.library is supposed to allow faster ethernet speed with fast ethernet but I wonder if it is broken or the timings are too tight for some setups.

You could try to find an old Voodoo 3 for testing. This would allow you to play with Warp3D programs also.

I've got a Voodoo, but I can't use resolutions that match my monitor with it. I did go back to pci.library 9.7, but I'm not sure if it was needed, I'm just staying there for safety sake right now.

For the time being, I've also gone back to Roadshow. I have better stability with it other than this one benchmark and it now seems to give similar performance to Genesis.

Who knows, it could be a bug there or I may find that I hit the bug during real-world use eventually.

I also found out that I could use netshutdown followed by addnetinterface to safely recover from the netio hang.

I'm able to get a bit over 1MBps now with the settings I'm using, both send and receive in netio (until it hangs and I have to ctrl-C) and using ftp from an in-house server. Those huge dips seem to be gone from what I can tell.

I set tcp.mssdflt to 536, the standard default size, and it actually seemed to help. 1500 is slower here, 1400 was better than 1500 and 536 seems completely safe and fast enough.

I raised the tcp.recvspace to 65536, but not the send. Raising both seemed to cause issues, but raising just this one seemed to pull up the receive to match the already good send speed. I think this was one of the biggest improvements.

In the interface, I set iprequests to 77 (a magic number from another thread that I'm now afraid to touch) and writerequests to 64. These seemed to also make a noticeable difference.

It still seems odd to get such slow speeds, but with the weak CPU and PCI implementation we have, that's probably about the best I can hope for.

[Heiroglyph]

It can be dangerous to change the memory usage settings for the TCP/IP stack. Given enough traffic at a sustained high rate, the TCP/IP stack may end up consuming most available and usable memory (with respect to fragmentation, etc.).

I first saw this with AmiTCP V4, when I tested it with the X-Surf 100, and given that the underlying TCP/IP stack architecture is the same, right down to how the memory management works, Roadshow must be susceptible to the same issues.

Did you read the entire thread on which you found the tweaking information (there's some information on this subject in the Roadshow documentation, too)? There is more information to be found there, including how fast the X-Surf 100 can be expected to be, and under which circumstances.

I read the thread and the documentation carefully, although I may have missed something.

In my own tests I found that 2.2 MBytes/s should be possible if you don't actually use the data transmitted. In reality with a web browser or an ftp client using the data transmitted you might get more than half of the 2.2 MBytes/s, and that's still a lot more than the Zorro II Ethernet cards can deliver. The X-Surf 100 is the fastest Amiga Ethernet card there is.

You do realize that I don't have an X-Surf 100, right? I'm asking about an A4000 Mediator tower with Realtek 8139D 10/100 card.

I have never seen anything stating what can be expected from a Mediator like mine until I found Matt's netio output that I listed above.