X-Surf 100 - Best TCP/IP for Speed?

[matt3k]

Currently I own Ariandne with MNI drivers in Miami, and working for the big speed increase...

Getting funds together to buy this awesome card and was wondering:

Is roadshow the fastest for the card?
What is the best TCP/IP stack for multitasking and system performance?
Anyone using roadshow with this card?


Appreciate the feedback...

[matt3k]

@Olsen

Thanks!

I'm using a 3000D with a CS MKIII 060-50.

I will use the easynet front end and hope they update it to work with lpr.device in the near future for printing.

One issue I had with the Ariandne and my Delfina Plus, is that if I copied large files from my NAS and played "insane" mp3's, (If I copy smaller files and/or played normal mp3's there is no issue) I would get stuttering playback.  The Delfina Plus only uses 2% CPU, so I thought it was bus related.  Perhaps this may be CPU, and will not go way with the X-100.

Guess I will have to test that one...

Again thanks for sharing...

[matt3k]

Thanks Olsen,

I increased the buffer in AmigaAmp to 'File' and it works perfectly now!  No more stuttering playback.  Works perfect with the Ariandne.  

My X-Surf 100 arrives today, so the only outstanding issue is the update of Easynet for V4 so I can print.

Again thank you for the help.

Will let you know the speed comparison between the Ariandne and the X-surf.  Initially I will just use Miami until the updates to Easynet take place.

What test do you recommend for calculating speeds of the cards?

Looks like you've got the right gear to make the most of the X-Surf 100 then.



Well... should you ever get curious, the free "Roadshow" demo will still be available for evaluation. Plugging in "lpr.device" in the services configuration file should not be too hard. Come to think of it, I'll make a note to add a sample entry for it.



It probably will not get worse either. How you describe it, it seems to me that the issue may be with the size of the mp3 decoding buffer.

If the file to be played is small, it will transfer quickly over the network while the player can either still keep up with decoding, or will decode it just in time for the network access not to have a negative impact on it. But if the file is large enough, decoding, playback and reading more data off the network will happen in parallel. Because the decoder and the TCP/IP stack are competing for the CPU, playback quality inevitably suffers.

I had the same problem with the "Concierto" add-on for the Picasso IV. Because the "Concierto" hardware was interrupt-driven and could not use DMA (on top of that the sound chip had its own quirks), playback always consumed CPU time. Playing back mp3 files on the "Concierto" left little CPU time to other tasks. You could either listen to the music or do something else, but not both.

Now if you had a larger decoding/playback buffer, it might be that the player will be able to feed audio data to the Delfina Plus more easily while it's reading more data from the network. Increasing the buffer size, if that is possible, would be the classic remedy for this kind of problem.

[matt3k]

OK, installed the x-surf 100.

Using Miami right now and it is barely faster than the Ariandne.

Ariandne with MNI gives 155,000 cps and 25% cpu.
X-Surf with SANA2 gives 170,000 cps and 15% cpu.

Oh well.  Hopefully when I figure out how to install AmiTCP with Easynet, the results will double...

[matt3k]

Will configure Easynet tonight and report back.

Interesting I ran speed tests later and the cpu usage went way up (as I expect from Olsen's tests).

The first speed test was only 15% cpu now she is in the 90s%.  And I feel the slowdown when using the Amiga.  MP3's play perfectly still but sluggish behavior has creeped into play...

Hoping for much better speed with EasyNet, and hopefully better cpu.

The Ariandne with MNI is really fast and multitasks very well.  Guess Maxing out 10mbs leaves the cpu free to count sheep...

[matt3k]

Weird, just plain weird.

EasyNet is slow only getting 30,000 cps.  Tried increasing the buffers to 4096 with no change.

The only thing I can even think of, is that I had to switch to opendns for dns to even make EasyNet work.  Road Runner DNS will not work in EasyNet but work fine in Miami.  Could this impact download speed?

For a while my cpu was spiking to 90%, but now it's back down to 15% with either Miami or EasyNet.

Miami SANA2 peeked at 200,000 this morning and 15% cpu.

[matt3k]

@Olsen

Thanks for the help, it is truly appreciated.

I will continue to run EasyNet vanilla for now.

I am using the latest device 1.11 and I will look into the config file.

I noticed that I can spike the cpu if I use samba and copy from my NAS, but using Ibrowse it is very inconsistent (mostly around 15%) even with copying large files from aminet.  With either stack I'm getting the same cpu but much different results.

I will do a peer to peer test that you use later to see how the numbers change.

I will check out the DNS provider you suggest.

Thanks again and I will check back when I complete the tests.

[matt3k]

Tried the AmiTCP.config file from the archive and it only got me to 60,000 cps.

Also set up AmiTCP with the suggested DNS server, no difference.

The only things I can think of is:
1.  When I download the update via easynet, is seems extremely fast.  Best guess at least 250000 cps.
2.  I haven't changed my router away from road runner dns yet.  Maybe it is conflicting with amitcp settings and the opendns.
3.  Raw copies accross network seem much faster.  For downloading from aminet, Miami is 4 times faster (again pointing to DNS)

Do I need to change my router over also or can amitcp access a different dns with out issues?

[matt3k]

@Olsen

Installed Roadshow Demo.

Wow, wow, wow, and wow.  350,000 cps peek and always above 300,000.

Ok, so now I need to test smb shares on the nas and samba.  Assuming those work, and you have yourself another customer.  Don't know what Easynet is having trouble with but, it simply will not perform, was just going to use Miami and hang out at 200,000.  Not any more, your product screams...

[matt3k]

Would that be local network traffic or internet traffic?

Internet - downloading from Aminet with Ibrowse reporting the cps.  Was only getting 155,000 constant from the Ariandne, so doubling was a good test for me.

I have yet to test locally across my network, I will look up the test you recommended earlier.  Would you tell me exactly what your test is so I can simulate it?  

Copying across my LAN with Roadshow sucks all the life out of my cpu , So I hope to see some large numbers (At least the music doesn't skip, but she doesn't have anything left over).  I have a gigabit network with Cat 5e factory crimpled, so I should be decent speed here...

Can't understand what is fishy with EasyNet either, so if we can make roadshow work I'll go with you and support your efforts...

Thanks again for all the help and patience.

[matt3k]

Did a bit more work to test it properly.

Switched to FTP using my NAS in my LAN.

Much different story.

Miami with SANA -  900,000 cps
Roadshow demo - 1,200,000 cps
EasyNet -          -1,500,000 cps

Seem like with FTP EasyNet is the fastest.

That still seems slow for a 100mb NIC in a Lan.  

Easynet has to have some issues, perhaps it is in the dns setup.  It is a bit convoluted to my thinking.  

Any ideas???

[matt3k]

Man this site is terrible lately.  It took me 7 times of logging in to get here...

@Olsen

Please share the speed tweaks for Roadshow!  I already greatly increased the buffers.  If I get it to perform beyond or even the same as EasyNet, I will pick it up.

Thanks for the great information.  I going to conduct some more tests to make sure something isn't wrong in my network.  I need to rule out every possible other component to point blame at the X-Surf or the TCP/IP stack.

My gut tells me that is where the issue is, but I need to prove it.

[matt3k]

Follow up.

Tried FTP - NAS to my Windows PC and easily hits 20mb/s.

This is definitely an issue with my system, the card or the stack.

The best I can get with Easynet and FTP is 41Kbyte/s.

I connected my amiga to the nas on the same switch and disconnected everything else, just to make sure.

I'm willing to tinker more if anyone has ideas???

Matt

[matt3k]

20 Mbit/s on a local LAN seems slow.

Great point...   must be an issue with the qnap nas.  That being said the xsurf should still see the same speed.

I will ftp to the pc and see if there is a difference.  Will also use a different switch.

Appreciate the help.

[matt3k]

Um, not really.

The problem is that the X-Surf 100 is so fast that your Amiga will spend almost all CPU time just to feed new data to the card, or transfer data from the card to the TCP/IP stack.

If your Amiga were faster, then the transmission speed would be higher.

The X-Surf 100 is literally waiting for the Amiga to catch up to what it is doing, while the Amiga is already running at full tilt.

Still an CS MKIII 060 @ 50MHz and 128MB of local ram, should produce much better results.  At least what your Warp Engine 040 @40MHz is giving you.  This performance is dismal.  

Could AMFTP and Ibrowse be lying to me, can't see where that would be possible so again I go back to the hardware.  

I tried booting as vanilla as possible, thinking it was my hacks, to make it go faster and it made no difference.  Wonder if the X-Surf is Defective? Nothing else could explain for it at this point.

Could you PM for the speed test you created?  What do I need for the other system?