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Conference 7.286::fddi

Title:FDDI - The Next Generation
Moderator:NETCAD::STEFANI
Created:Thu Apr 27 1989
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2259
Total number of notes:8590

2059.0. "DEFPA & WNT performance problem" by KOZY::SARKOZY (Anyone know where Magyarorszag is?) Fri Jun 07 1996 14:23

All,

I just connected two 2100 5/275's (2 CPU's/2100) together with DEFPA's using a
dual strand of fibre between the two cards as specified in the DEFPA
installation guide.  Brought the two nodes up and started doing transfers.

The highest performance I got was around 3.1MB/sec. -- and this was on the
second copy (I presume cache assisted with the second copy).  When I enabled
full-duplex, it went up to ~ 3.7MB/sec.  I was using File Manager for the
copies, but I also tried using FTP which yielded nearly the exact same results. 
Using File Manager, pushing files to a node seemed to provide better performance
than pulling them (which was slowest ~ 2.5MB/sec).  I did these copies using
both NETBEUI, or TCP/IP.

I also tried to remove unused bindings and stopping un-needed services to try to
improve performance.  Is this the best performance I can expect to get out of
this configuration?  I would have thought we'd be able to achieve more like
>10MB/sec - or higher in full-duplex mode.

Is my data off?  Are the drivers is use of an overhaul?  Would appreciate any
I/O here.

Ron S.
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2059.112368::thomasThe Code WarriorFri Jun 07 1996 14:522
WinNT is in need of an overhual.  It's TCP implementation is not tuned for
high-bandwidth networking.
2059.2NETCAD::STEFANIFri Jun 07 1996 16:2714
>>Is my data off?  Are the drivers is use of an overhaul?  Would appreciate any
>>I/O here.
    
    I won't say my device driver is the greatest thing since sliced bread,
    but no, the device driver being overhauled won't help your performance.
    
    The Windows NT 4.0 BETA that I've looked at seems to have improved
    performance.  At least, the Hardware Compatibility Test suite for NDIS
    drivers indicates decent numbers for FDDI.  Architecturally, NDIS 3
    suffers from having to do buffer copies on all receive packets.  This
    is something Microsoft is addressing in their upcoming NDIS 4
    specification.
    
    - Larry
2059.3How fast is the transmit side using NT?KEIKI::WHITEMIN(2�,FWIW)Fri Jun 07 1996 17:5111
 
    	Larry,
    
    	In this simplistic test you say we are being limited by the
    recipient of the copy operation.
    
    	Can we infer from this that the transmit performance of the NT
    FDDI driver would be better than 3.x MBytes per second if we were
    servicing multiple recipients simultaneously?
    
                                        Bill			
2059.4not to interject....KOZY::SARKOZYAnyone know where Magyarorszag is?Fri Jun 07 1996 18:0816
but, they are really interested in point-to-point performance.  The customer is
moving lots of data between two servers (Raster Image Processing application).  

So, aggregate throughput through multiple links wouldn't really help.

Does D-UNIX get up to 8-12MB/sec?  Which piece of s/w is really hurting us here?
Do we know?  Is there a h/w difficiency here?  Does the DEFEA perform just as
well on a 2100?  Is the T2 PCI host-bridge hurting us on this?

The customer feels they should be pushing at least 8MB/sec through this link.  
They h/w is there and they feel s/w isn't this issue on a platform like the
2100.  And, at 15 systems/month, well, hmmm....

Thanx for the I/O,

Ron S.
2059.512368::thomasThe Code WarriorFri Jun 07 1996 18:248
Digital UNIX has no problem saturating a FDDI.  The 2100 this is typed on can
hit 8MB/s quite easily.  Heck, an Intel Pentium can do 8MB/s (running one of
the BSD UNI).

The hardware is not the problem.  The problem is NT.  NT does not currently
timestamps and large windows which are needed for getting the most out of 
FDDI.  Couple that with having to copy buffers on receive, you just can't
get good performance.
2059.6NETCAD::STEFANIMon Jun 10 1996 08:2615
    Matt's right.  We knew from simulation as well as production products
    like the DEFTA (FDDI TurboChannel adapter) that the DMA controller
    that's common to the FDDI adapters (including DEFPA) can handle FDDI line
    speeds.  It is certainly not the hardware design that's keeping you
    from achieving the performance you're looking for.
    
    It's a sad fact Windows NT has some I/O performance problems, that
    Microsoft is only now beginning to address.  The device driver is
    limited to what the NDIS sublayer allows it to do in terms of receiving
    and transmitting packets.  There *is* some tuning that you can do, for
    example, increasing the window size on TCP/IP, that might help your
    performance.  There's probably other performance tuning that you can
    do to help.
    
    -Larry
2059.7NT: someone said it stands for 'neat toy'BBPBV1::WALLACEWhatever it takes WHO?(sm)Wed Jun 12 1996 17:0314
    Ron,
    
    There's an interesting customer-readable whitepaper around on the
    optimisations in the DEC OSF/1 (as it then was) TCP/IP driver. I wish I
    could remember what it was called; maybe some kind soul can (or do an
    internal Altavista search for some suitable keywords...)
    
    Welcome to the world of hard reality. NT is not VMS++. NT is not Unix.
    It does do a lot of things very nicely. You've found a Quality
    Improvement Opportunity; your guess is as good as mine as to where this
    is likely to be on Bill's ToDo list.
    
    regards
    john
2059.8How to set TCP/IP window size under Windows NTNETCAD::STEFANIWed Jun 19 1996 12:0830
    FYI - To increase the TCP/IP window size under Windows NT, use the
    Registry Editor by running REGEDT32.EXE.  Go down the following tree
    
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
    
    and add a new value called "TcpWindowSize" of type REG_DWORD.
    
    The following description is taken from "Optimizing Windows NT" which
    is part of the Microsoft Windows NT Resource Kit.
    
    TcpWindowSize	REG_DWORD	number
    
    	This parameter determines the maximum TCP receive window size
    	offered by the system.  The receive window specifies the number
    	of bytes a sender may transmit without receiving an
    	acknowledgment.  In general, larger receive windows will
    	improve performance over high delay or high bandwidth networks.
    	For maximum efficiency, the receive window should be an even
    	multiple of the MTU of the underlying network less the size of
    	the standard TCP and IP headers (40 bytes).
    
    	Default: The smaller of: 0xffff OR the larger of: four times the
    	maximum TCP data size on the network OR 8192 rounded up to an
    	even multiple of the network TCP data size
    
    Note: The MTU for an FDDI node is 4491 bytes including the MAC header,
    but excluding the 4 byte CRC.  The MTU is 4470 bytes if you also
    exclude the 21 byte FDDI 802.2 SNAP LLC header for a TCP/IP frame.
    I don't know which MTU "size" you should use for your calculations.