[gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Stroller]

Hi there,

Yesterday I reseated the network cable between my server cupboard and  
my desk, and it now lights up on the switch by my desk as gigabit. But  
a file-transfer today is slower than I might have hoped.

I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the  
switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that  
the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and  
negotiating as gigabit speeds?

The hard-drives on the server are using an older PCI SATA card, and  
the NIC is also PCI. But I would have expected it to be a bit faster  
than 100Mbps.

Any estimates over what kind of speed I should be seeing for large  
file-transfers over Samba? Wildly ball-park is fine - I wouldn't  
expect a 10x speed increase, but maybe 2x or 3x - 4x would be great!

I'll be testing between my Macs (both on the desktop switch, ruling  
out both the Linux box and the suspicious cable) later today, I'd just  
like some ideas of where I should be starting from.

Right now I'm seeing 10 gigs of .mp4 files (1gb - 2gb per video file)  
taking about an hour - that's about what I'd expect from old 100Mbps  
networking, not this shiny new stuff.

I'm not seeing any difference commenting & uncommenting "aio read size  
= 1, aio write size = 1" (separate lines) from /etc/samba/smb.conf and  
then running `/etc/init.d/samba reload`, but maybe I shouldn't expect  
that to make any difference on an existing transfer. I just don't want  
to interfere with this right now - I just want to copy as much as  
possible on to my laptop before I go out, and I'll take a look at this  
performance issue when I get home.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or pointers,

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 18 January 2010 13:50:55 Stroller wrote:
> Any estimates over what kind of speed I should be seeing for large  
> file-transfers over Samba? Wildly ball-park is fine - I wouldn't  
> expect a 10x speed increase, but maybe 2x or 3x - 4x would be great!
> 

Somewhere on the order of 400-600 Mb/s is usual. The NIC and it's firmware can 
cope with 1G, but cabling usually cannot


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Ward Poelmans]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 12:50, Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the switch
> *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that the Linux
> server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating as gigabit
> speeds?

If i recall correct, you just have to take a look at the kernel log's
(dmesg): it says if it has a 100 mbps or 1 gbps link connection.

Ward

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Stroller]

On 18 Jan 2010, at 12:14, Ward Poelmans wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 12:50, Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk 
> > wrote:
>> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the  
>> switch
>> *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that the  
>> Linux
>> server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating as  
>> gigabit
>> speeds?
>
> If i recall correct, you just have to take a look at the kernel log's
> (dmesg): it says if it has a 100 mbps or 1 gbps link connection.

I'm not seeing that:

$ dmesg | grep 8169
r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded
r8169 0000:02:09.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
r8169 0000:02:09.0: no PCI Express capability
eth1: RTL8169sb/8110sb at 0xf8634000, 00:21:27:c9:79:88, XID 10000000  
IRQ 17
r8169: eth1: link up
r8169: eth1: link up
$

A grep for "100" does not show anything more useful.

I had thought [1] that `ifconfig` had a line that stated the hardware  
link speed, but I can't see it now.

Stroller.



[1] My memory left over from days when I had fairly recently spent  
£135 on an 8-port 100Mbps switch (not hub) and my flatmate still had a  
NIC performing at 10Mbps.

[gentoo-user] Re: How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 01/18/2010 01:50 PM, Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Yesterday I reseated the network cable between my server cupboard and my
> desk, and it now lights up on the switch by my desk as gigabit. But a
> file-transfer today is slower than I might have hoped.
>
> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the
> switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that
> the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating
> as gigabit speeds?

Doing a

   dmesg | grep "Link is up"

should show something like:

   eth0: Link is up at 1000 Mbps, full duplex, flow control rx

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[YoYo siska]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:50:55AM +0000, Stroller wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Yesterday I reseated the network cable between my server cupboard and my 
> desk, and it now lights up on the switch by my desk as gigabit. But a 
> file-transfer today is slower than I might have hoped.
>
> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the  
> switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that  
> the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating 
> as gigabit speeds?

mii-tool (net-tools) or ethtool should be able to tell you that


> The hard-drives on the server are using an older PCI SATA card, and the 
> NIC is also PCI. But I would have expected it to be a bit faster than 
> 100Mbps.
>
> Any estimates over what kind of speed I should be seeing for large  
> file-transfers over Samba? Wildly ball-park is fine - I wouldn't expect a 
> 10x speed increase, but maybe 2x or 3x - 4x would be great!

don't know about samba, but with scp or nfs I can get about 20MByte/s which is
the speed of my disk (and for scp almost what my cpu can manage ;)
scp-ing /dev/zero gets me something short of 30MBye/s but that is
because my CPU cannot manage more ;)

You can see an estimate of your "raw" speed between the two machines by
running 
nc -l -p 7777 | pv >/dev/null
on one computer and 
pv /dev/zero | nc OTHER_COMPUTER 7777
on the other. I don't have a 1gbit  switch here right now, so can't give
you an estimate (with two notebooks connected directly by cable I just
got 100MByte/s, which is near enough to the theoretical maximum ;)
(pv is like cat, but displays a progressbar with act. speed, sys-apps/pv)

you can also try netperf for more precise benchmarks 

>
> I'll be testing between my Macs (both on the desktop switch, ruling out 
> both the Linux box and the suspicious cable) later today, I'd just like 
> some ideas of where I should be starting from.
>
> Right now I'm seeing 10 gigs of .mp4 files (1gb - 2gb per video file)  
> taking about an hour - that's about what I'd expect from old 100Mbps  
> networking, not this shiny new stuff.

hmm, that seems a bit low even for 100mbit, I have usually no problem getting
cca 10 MByte/s with 100mbit switches (without other traffic), though I
use either nfs or scp
the only time I remember using samba was with a winxp server, which
didn't go above 1MB/s, but I suspect that the problem was either on the
win side or some misunderstanding between win and linux ;)

>
> I'm not seeing any difference commenting & uncommenting "aio read size = 
> 1, aio write size = 1" (separate lines) from /etc/samba/smb.conf and  
> then running `/etc/init.d/samba reload`, but maybe I shouldn't expect  
> that to make any difference on an existing transfer. I just don't want  
> to interfere with this right now - I just want to copy as much as  
> possible on to my laptop before I go out, and I'll take a look at this  
> performance issue when I get home.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions or pointers,
>
> Stroller.
>



yoyo

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Dan Cowsill]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Stroller
<stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Yesterday I reseated the network cable between my server cupboard and my
> desk, and it now lights up on the switch by my desk as gigabit. But a
> file-transfer today is slower than I might have hoped.
>
> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the switch
> *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that the Linux
> server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating as gigabit
> speeds?
>
> The hard-drives on the server are using an older PCI SATA card, and the NIC
> is also PCI. But I would have expected it to be a bit faster than 100Mbps.
>
> Any estimates over what kind of speed I should be seeing for large
> file-transfers over Samba? Wildly ball-park is fine - I wouldn't expect a
> 10x speed increase, but maybe 2x or 3x - 4x would be great!
>
> I'll be testing between my Macs (both on the desktop switch, ruling out both
> the Linux box and the suspicious cable) later today, I'd just like some
> ideas of where I should be starting from.
>
> Right now I'm seeing 10 gigs of .mp4 files (1gb - 2gb per video file) taking
> about an hour - that's about what I'd expect from old 100Mbps networking,
> not this shiny new stuff.
>
> I'm not seeing any difference commenting & uncommenting "aio read size = 1,
> aio write size = 1" (separate lines) from /etc/samba/smb.conf and then
> running `/etc/init.d/samba reload`, but maybe I shouldn't expect that to
> make any difference on an existing transfer. I just don't want to interfere
> with this right now - I just want to copy as much as possible on to my
> laptop before I go out, and I'll take a look at this performance issue when
> I get home.
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions or pointers,
>
> Stroller.
>
>
>

In all likelihood, its your hard disk slowing down the network
transfer, and not the cabling.  Generally speaking, if the hardware
says gigabit, than you've got gigabit.

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Hung Dang]

One more thing. The file transfer speed is
min(max(HDD),max(NIC),max(others)) so it will depend on your HDD, your
network and other reasons. I find out that using sftp command seem to be
faster than NFS or Samba. Could you try sftp and check if it is faster
or not? Then check the dmesg as well as network cables to see if there
is any problem. 

Hung

On 01/18/10 05:46, Dan Cowsill wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:50 AM, Stroller
> <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>> Hi there,
>>
>> Yesterday I reseated the network cable between my server cupboard and my
>> desk, and it now lights up on the switch by my desk as gigabit. But a
>> file-transfer today is slower than I might have hoped.
>>
>> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the switch
>> *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please, that the Linux
>> server at the other end is recognising the NIC and negotiating as gigabit
>> speeds?
>>
>> The hard-drives on the server are using an older PCI SATA card, and the NIC
>> is also PCI. But I would have expected it to be a bit faster than 100Mbps.
>>
>> Any estimates over what kind of speed I should be seeing for large
>> file-transfers over Samba? Wildly ball-park is fine - I wouldn't expect a
>> 10x speed increase, but maybe 2x or 3x - 4x would be great!
>>
>> I'll be testing between my Macs (both on the desktop switch, ruling out both
>> the Linux box and the suspicious cable) later today, I'd just like some
>> ideas of where I should be starting from.
>>
>> Right now I'm seeing 10 gigs of .mp4 files (1gb - 2gb per video file) taking
>> about an hour - that's about what I'd expect from old 100Mbps networking,
>> not this shiny new stuff.
>>
>> I'm not seeing any difference commenting & uncommenting "aio read size = 1,
>> aio write size = 1" (separate lines) from /etc/samba/smb.conf and then
>> running `/etc/init.d/samba reload`, but maybe I shouldn't expect that to
>> make any difference on an existing transfer. I just don't want to interfere
>> with this right now - I just want to copy as much as possible on to my
>> laptop before I go out, and I'll take a look at this performance issue when
>> I get home.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any suggestions or pointers,
>>
>> Stroller.
>>
>>
>>
>>     
> In all likelihood, its your hard disk slowing down the network
> transfer, and not the cabling.  Generally speaking, if the hardware
> says gigabit, than you've got gigabit.
>
>   

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Keith Dart]

=== On Mon, 01/18, Stroller wrote: ===
> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the  
> switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please,
> that the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and  
> negotiating as gigabit speeds?

===

ethtool eth0

emerge ethtool if you don't have it. 

Not all chips/drivers support the ioctls necessary to report that, but
most recent ones do.


-- Keith Dart

-- 

-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   Keith Dart <keith@dartworks.biz>
   public key: ID: 19017044
   <http://www.dartworks.biz/>
   =====================================================================

Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 753 bytes --]

On Tuesday 19 January 2010 01:28:07 Keith Dart wrote:
> === On Mon, 01/18, Stroller wrote: ===
> 
> > I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the
> > switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please,
> > that the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and
> > negotiating as gigabit speeds?
> 
> ===
> 
> ethtool eth0
> 
> emerge ethtool if you don't have it.
> 
> Not all chips/drivers support the ioctls necessary to report that, but
> most recent ones do.

You can also run good ol' lshw.  It'll show you what it has negotiated with 
the switch:

configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver= [snip ...] 
multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] How to determine if a NIC is playing gigabit?

[Stroller]

On 21 Jan 2010, at 22:45, Mick wrote:

> On Tuesday 19 January 2010 01:28:07 Keith Dart wrote:
>> === On Mon, 01/18, Stroller wrote: ===
>>
>>> I'm not ruling out the cable, because it's pretty beat up (but the
>>> switch *is* lighting up as 1000), but how do I determine, please,
>>> that the Linux server at the other end is recognising the NIC and
>>> negotiating as gigabit speeds?
>>
>> ===
>>
>> ethtool eth0
>>
>> emerge ethtool if you don't have it.
>>
>> Not all chips/drivers support the ioctls necessary to report that,  
>> but
>> most recent ones do.
>
> You can also run good ol' lshw.  It'll show you what it has  
> negotiated with
> the switch:
>
> configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver= [snip ...]
> multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s

Thanks to you both.

Either of those are exactly what I was originally looking for. Both  
show the interface at 1000Mb/s.

I must have overlooked Keith's reply amongst all the others - some of  
those mention other ways to diagnose the problem, and I haven't  
replied to them yet because I haven't had a chance to try the things  
they suggest. I've been really busy this week.

What I did find time to do was try copying the same files between my  
laptop & my desktop. The files were 23gig and took about 2 hours 40  
minutes, I think, when I copied them from the server to my laptop.  
Testing between my laptop & my desktop they went in about 25 minutes.  
This was using Samba for both tests. Ironically, using the native  
Apple AFP protocol was slower (about 40 minutes) but still nowhere  
near as slow as the original copy from the server.

I'm pretty sure now that the bottleneck is my Linux Samba server or  
the 2' of cable from it to the network switch in the server cupboard.  
I'll double check this as soon as I can and then start proper  
diagnostics. Some of the suggestions made (e.g. netcat) look really  
useful - I'll let y'all know how I get on.

Stroller.