Slow local FTP transfer on A1200

[Everblue]

I am trying to transfer 5 gigs of WHDLoad files from my MAC (FTP Server) to my A1200 (FTP Client).

This is my A1200 setup:

Desktop A1200 with Blizzard 030/50 MK IV with 16 megs of RAM
OS3.9
Genesis TCP/IP Stack
AmiFTP
PCMCIA Network Card

Everything connects fine as it should but when I am trying to transfer files, I get uber slow speeds - around 2300CPS, at this rate it will take months, if not years for everything to go through!

Just for testing, I used my PC Laptop to transfer a few files from the same FTP and the speeds were super high (megabits), so I wonder, whats wrong?

Thanks in advance for yoru suggestions!


E'Blue

[Zac67]

Make sure the duplex settings matches your network setup, a mismatch will significantly reduce effective speed when the line gets loaded (due to detection/generation of excessive collisions). When Amy's connected to a switch port, make sure duplex is FULL.

[kolla]

Uhm, setting it to FULL duplex is exactly the opposite of what you should do. Unless you can explicitly set it to full in both ends it is a certain way to get it wrong.

When setting one side to full duplex, negotiation _will_ fail, and the other device, will default to half duplex, and presto.. you have a duplex problem.

So, set the switch to half duplex - the negotiation will then fail and the device in the other end will also end up with half duplex - no duplex problem.

Besides, this is a PCMCIA card, combo 10BaseT/10Base2 - you dont see those capable of running full duplex anyhow, even exclusiv 10BaseT cards rarely do/did full duplex.

[Everblue]

Hi there, thanks for the answers.

I have two updates:

1. I am trying to run GenesisPrefs, but when I double click the Icon, nothing happens. No program comes up. I have tried running SnoopDos in the background and it seems that it is looking for some .mcc files (MUI?). I do have MUI properly installed. Any idea what could be wrong?

2. I have found out that if I transfer a single (large) file, it will transfer at a relatively high speed - but when transferring WHDLoad games folders it just gets stuck at very low speeds.

Thanks again for any suggestions!


E'Blue

Everblue wrote:
2. I have found out that if I transfer a single (large) file, it will transfer at a relatively high speed - but when transferring WHDLoad games folders it just gets stuck at very low speeds.

ftp will 'speed up' in the initial stages of transferring a large file... so if you're sending a bunch of directories and small files, see if you can join the files into an archive before transferring. (This is a result of the design of the tcp protocol iirc..)

[Thomas]

I am trying to run GenesisPrefs, but when I double click the Icon, nothing happens. No program comes up.

You should update your OS 3.9. This was fixed long ago and other serious bugs have been fixed, too.

http://www.haage-partner.de/download/AmigaOS/

If you don't want to update, get the gendemo archive from Aminet and extract the MUI classes from it.

I have found out that if I transfer a single (large) file, it will transfer at a relatively high speed - but when transferring WHDLoad games folders it just gets stuck at very low speeds.

I cannot help with your network problems, but I wouldn't use the network to transfer such a huge amount of data at all. I would connect the HDD from one computer to the other computer temporarily and copy files directly from HDD to HDD.

Bye,
Thomas

[Everblue]

Thanks everyone for your contributions!

I will start out by installing boing bag 1 and 2

E'Blue

[Everblue]

Here is an update, which maybe useful for future amiga users having the same problem.

I have zipped the 5 gigs of WHDLOAD files on my PC, and the resultant file is 3 gigs. I have then transferred them to my Amiga via FTP (PC = server, Amiga = client) at very high speeds, taking slightly less than 15 minutes.



Now now, how much will take to unzip the lot?

I guess will know soon!

[Ilwrath]

@pkillo-

ftp will 'speed up' in the initial stages of transferring a large file... so if you're sending a bunch of directories and small files, see if you can join the files into an archive before transferring. (This is a result of the design of the tcp protocol iirc..)

Well, there are some specifications of TCP that control packet size, the transfer window, and whatnot, but you're probably not too likely to be running into those being a limiting factor.  

FTP itself, on the other hand, negotiates a new connection for each file it transfers, and then closes that connection when the file is complete.  Not a big deal if you're transferring a handful of large files.  But, if there's a bunch of little files, that will be a bunch of overhead.  Many newer FTP clients attempt to compensate by opening a few connections at once, figuring that at least one should be transferring at any given time.  If AmiFTP wasn't configured to do this, or the 68030 couldn't push enough bytes around to do this....  That could be an additional performance hit.

[bloodline]

This reminds me of the time 8 years ago when I tried to transfer the entire contents of my 540meg Amiga HD to my PC via a null modem cable... I remember that if I set the rate above 38400 the connection would fail... I left it running for over a day before the connection failed... And when I checked, most of the files had errors... I learned a lot from that exercise.

Mostly, that to transfer data, attaching the drive to the PC was best :-)