IBrowse2.3 download transfer rate.

[amiwalker]

Hello:

How fast should the download speed be with
A3000D
Warpengine 040 40Mhz
200M fast ram
2M chip ram
GVP Spectrum Gfx card
IBrowse2.3
X-SurfII
OS3.9 (BB2)
Genesis

Right now the max. I can get is ~18K/sec.

[KennyR]

You left out the most important info - what you're actually connected to. Cable, ISDN 56K modem, DSL, a LAN? A serial link? What is your advertised internet bandwidth?

I get 250 K/s LAN and 90 K/s internet on cable with a slower Amiga (040/25), but then its a PCMCIA network card, not an x-surf.

[blobrana]

Hum,
Hardware doesn't really have much affect on the download speed (if you know what i mean)...
The main restriction is the type of internet connection, the quality of that connection and your ibrowse settings (eg like MTU etc)
A 56k modem may expect 6k/sec...
(though i must admit , when i carried out a test with the same hardware on a PC, and same settings, i only got 4.5k/sec???)

[KennyR]

Blobrana wrote:
(though i must admit , when i carried out a test with the same hardware on a PC, and same settings, i only got 4.5k/sec???)

That's the top you'll ever get with a 56k modem. If you see faster, its because of hardware modem compression squashing down what you actually have to physically transfer. You might see text files being transferred up to 8 K/s. A compressed file like a LhA or mp3 probably won't go faster than 4.5 K/s. Analogue lines suck.

[blobrana]

Hum,
tnx for the clarification.
(which reminded me of the time i noticed that it was downloading (-from cache-) at 200k/sec!)

Yeah, Analogue lines suck... but it`s all  i (can afford) need just now  :-)

[amiwalker]

I have a Cable modem(Motorolla Surfboard SB5100) connected to a DLink DL704P router from there it branches off to 3 computers and a Playstation2 console.

On the PC I get a download speed of ~300k/sec.

why is the miggy so slow even with all of the other devices off?

My MTU setting is 1500

[KennyR]

It sounds to me like the x-surf is the bottleneck, but since I don't have one I can't be sure. Anyone out there with one who gets a better speed?

[amiwalker]

If so, would a Boot ROM help any?

Is there any way to speed up the X-SurfII via sana setting or something.

I read that Miami has a MNI driver that addresses the hardware directly. Is that any faster? I have not tried that option yet, has any one done this?

[blobrana]

@KennyR
Hum,
sounds like that is the problem...

@amiwalker
Follow this set up to set the correct speed

see, (doh, it`s in french)

But you can see the number to insert...

[patrik]

@AmiWalker:

IBrowse writes data to files in a very inefficient way. This often results in comical transferrates even when transferring data from a computer on the same local network.

There is one thing you can do to lessen the impact of IBrowses inefficient file-writing and that is using a better filesystem than FFS. Anyhow, first of all you should investigate wether it is IBrowses inefficient file-writing that is causing this by downloading to ram: instead and see if you get any better transferrates.

If you do get better transferrates when downloading to ram: I would recommend you to start using the SFS filesystem on the partition you are downloading stuff to and be sure to allocate it say 128 Buffers. I would actually recommend you to use SFS on all your partitions and harddrives as it is much faster than FFS.

To measure the raw tcp and udp speed the TCP/IP-stack plus NIC combo can manage (Genesis plus X-Surf2 in your case),  you can use ttcp and measure the speed between your Amiga and PC.
Amiga version of ttcp
Windows version of ttcp
Sourcecode for ttcp

Miami is generally much slower than AmiTCP and Genesis (which is practically AmiTCP with a GUI ontop to control and configure it) so you wouldnt gain by switching to it. Though if you have doubts about this, use ttcp to measure which one of the TCP/IP-stacks that are the fastest.

A boot-rom would not help the speeed in any way. Its sole purpose is to contain code used to boot from a NIC. Also, I am quite positive that there doesnt exist any boot-rom for any of the Amiga-NICs which has a boot-rom socket.


(edit):

I get 250KByte/Sec when downloading with IBrowse from a webserver on the same local net to a partition with SFS. If I instead download to ram: I get 300KByte/Sec. My A4000 has a A3640 cpu-card, a A2065 network card and I am using AmiTCP 4.3. As my A4000 is quite a bit slower than your A3000, you should be able to get transferrates atleast as high as those when downloading from a source capable of supplying data at those rates.


/Patrik

[blobrana]

hum,
where as i havent noticed any problems with the FFS and ibrowse...

< er, IMHO>
And changing filesystem that won`t help you gain a 10 x speed increase, (though there maybe a slight increase, and not worth the extra hassle for you just now)
< /er, IMHO>
 

[patrik]

@blobrana:

I have to agree with you that the combination FFS and IBrowse doesnt cause bad performance when downloading. I created a new partition to try it and got quite the same results.. doesnt it feel just great when you realize that you are totally wrong? ;=)

Though I still have to say that IBrowse seems to write very little data to the harddrive per call to the filesystem and that is just not very efficient. Just watch the harddrive-led when you are downloading from a webserver with a good connection on say your local network. I can almost hear the led scream: "lots of very small requests, lots of very small requests, lots of very small requests - iiiih".. in other words, what I am trying to say is that there is way more activity than there should be at such transferrate. Then try copying a file from a slow device like a CD-ROM set to 2X or 4X which has a similar transferrate to what you get when downloading something from a local net and watch the harddrive-led - it isnt screaming anymore .

If any IBrowse-programmers are reading this forum I would like to tell them to buffer more data before writing it out to disk and preferably give one the option to set the buffersize in the preferences.

Btw, he shouldnt have to worry about PPPoE as he has a router connected to the Cable-Modem which should handle that part for him.


@Amiwalker:

Just thought of something - you dont happen to have set the X-Surf2 to work in full-duplex mode? If so, you must change it back to half-duplex mode. This is as the X-Surf2 and most 10MBit cards isnt capable of auto-negotiating for linkspeed and duplex-mode with the other end of the line (your router). When your router senses that the X-Surf2 doesnt want to autonegotiate with it, it will assume that the X-Surf2 is working in half-duplex mode per default even if it is actually working in full-duplex mode. If that is the case, it will render _TONS!_ of collisions on the networking, slowing the transferrate to a crawl.

In the file ENVARC:Sana2/x-surf.config, set the variable 'Unit0.FullDuplex' to '0' and then reboot to make the X-Surf2 work in half-duplex mode.


/Patrik

[amiwalker]

I am running the X-SurfII in half duplex mode.

I do however seem to be having trouble with the Router.

The WAN seems to be locking up! This has happened to me twice, the second one was today. I unplugged the router power cord for a while then re-connected it. it seems to be working for now, but for how long I am not sure!

Since I cannot connect my X-SurfII directly to the cable modem (due to only 1 MAC address setup with my provider) it will be impossible for me to eliminate the router as a difinitive cause of the slow transfers.

I just checked the PC transfer rate through the router. It seems to be running at ~90K/sec.

I may just buy an up-to-date router. Any suggestions as to what make/model?

[KennyR]

Don't replace hardware until you know its not working properly. You could get a shiny new router and still have slow speeds.

Does your provider allow you to set up multiple MAC addresses for your account? I'm on cable too (Telewest Blueyonder), and I've set up 5. One for router and one for each of my computers, just in case I ever have to connect directly. Which has happened before.

[amiwalker]

Yes, for a $10.00/month fee.