NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/sys/hp/14764

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-12 | 1.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (richard g. adair)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Cluster performance
Summary: Faster NFS service
Keywords: ethernet speed
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 12 Jan 93 14:10:45 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: Arete Associates, San Diego
Lines: 22
Nntp-Posting-Host: sdcc12.ucsd.edu

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rick Jones) writes:
>One thing to remember is that accessing files over Ethernet
>(DUX/NFS/etc) is essentially like accessing files on a disk that will
>_never_ go faster than 1MB/s. As you increase the quantity of "other"
>traffic, it will have a direct impact on the speed with which you can
>access files.

NFS traffic between our HP730 and SunSSII workstation seems to be
transmitted at 2 Mbits/second.  I remember reading a long time ago
that Sun had a trick to "take over" the ethernet in a non-friendly
way to speed up ethernet transfers at the expense of other clients.
This was why Sun NFS server performance was always better than HP's
for a long time.  Perhaps this trick has migrated to the HP now as
well?  Some vendors said that this was because the NFS service was
part of the kernel on the Sun, and that HP had only recently put the
NFS portion in the kernel to get the speed improvement.  Since
Ethernet tops out at about 1.5 Mbits per second because of timing
constraints, I find this hard to believe...

Tony Burzio
Arete Associates
Rainy San Diego, CA