FTP and Samba Problem with XP. Download way too slow, Uploads all right

[Pierre Bilodeau]

I am a consultant and uses my laptop computer to connect on my client's network and do some developpement work. The way my PC is configured, it works just fine with all the clients network I connect to, but one...

The server I am trying to connect to here is running HP/UX B.11.11, and Samba is configured for Windows access. Whether I transfer files using Samba or FTP, I have the same problem: Downloads from HP/UX go as slow as 10 to 20KB/s, while uploads are going at more acceptable speeds, around 600KB/s. The MTU of the HP/UX server looked low to me (1500), but I tried to increase it to 4500 using lanadmin -M and got an error 22. Does something have a brilliant idea what I should look at???

My PC is an HP Pavilion N5250 running Windows XP professional, with a 3Com 10/100Mhz network PcCard. The lights on the PcCard indicates a 100Mhz network connection.

For supplemental information, below is the output of "lanscan" and "lanadmin --> lan --> display" for ppa #2.

Please help!

# lanscan
Hardware Station Crd Hdw Net-Interface NM MAC HP-DLPI DLPI
Path Address In# State NamePPA ID Type Support Mjr#
0/0/0/0 0x00306E1C6061 0 UP lan0 snap0 1 ETHER Yes 119
0/3/0/0 0x00306E0CB693 1 UP lan1 snap1 2 ETHER Yes 119
0/6/0/0 0x00306E0CA646 2 UP lan2 snap2 3 ETHER Yes 119

# lanadmin
PPA Number = 2
Description = lan2 HP A5230A/B5509BA PCI 10/100Base-TX Addon
[100BASE-TX,HD,A
Type (value) = ethernet-csmacd(6)
MTU Size = 1500
Speed = 100000000
Station Address = 0x306e0ca646
Administration Status (value) = up(1)
Operation Status (value) = up(1)
Last Change = 772
Inbound Octets = 238411801
Inbound Unicast Packets = 1351344
Inbound Non-Unicast Packets = 186749
Inbound Discards = 0
Inbound Errors = 0
Inbound Unknown Protocols = 64254
Outbound Octets = 1026483387
Outbound Unicast Packets = 2113166
Outbound Non-Unicast Packets = 28195
Outbound Discards = 0
Outbound Errors = 0
Outbound Queue Length = 0
Specific = 655367

Ethernet-like Statistics Group

Index = 3
Alignment Errors = 0
FCS Errors = 0
Single Collision Frames = 4313
Multiple Collision Frames = 23
Deferred Transmissions = 4862
Late Collisions = 25706
Excessive Collisions = 0
Internal MAC Transmit Errors = 0
Carrier Sense Errors = 0
Frames Too Long = 0
Internal MAC Receive Errors = 0

[harry d brown jr]

Pierre,

What kind of HP 9000 server do they have, and what kind of disk subsystem are they using? Is their HP9000 up to date with network patches?

Does anyone else, not running XP have the same issue, and if someone else does have XP, do they have the same issues?

What is the load on their HP9000 server look like?

Are they also using NFS on this server?

live free or die
harry

[Ron Kinner · Accepted solution]

If you look at your lanadmin output you will see that the NIC is set for 100BASE-TX,HD

This is your problem! HD means half duplex. The other end is surely set for full duplex and this mismatch is causing the problem.

Autonegotiate is notoriously bad and most experienced network guys will set it manually (ON BOTH ENDS!) to 100 FULL DUPLEX. DO that and you will see a marked improvement in your uploads from the HP.

Ron

[harry d brown jr]

Pierre,

Sorry about the delay, but sometimes work interfers with this forum.

Sometimes when a system is tuned for NFS, it collides with samba, and the oppisite is sometimes true. Another thing is that they could try to bring the patches up to Dec 2001, they have Sept 2001.

It's probably a net tuning thing, as you said ftp and samba are slow.

I wish I had some links, but the last time I found them using google.

live free or die
harry

[Pierre Bilodeau]

Hey! The problem was the Half-duplex thing. I changed it using "lanadmin -X 100FD 2" and it solved my problem.

Thanks a million.

By the way, sorry for the point system. I made a mistake and gave the points to the wrong guy initially, but then give them back to Ron also. Sure you won't mind right?! :-))

Thanks to both of you anyway.

[Ron Kinner]

I'm sure he doesn't mind about the points. However,
be aware that you need to lock in the switch end to 100 FULL or next time the cable gets unplugged or the switch or HP reboot the switch end might be half duplex.

Also when you reboot the HP I believe you will lose your lanadmin setting. You can lock it in with SAM (at least on 11.0) or see
http://www.unixadm.net/howto/fulld_hpux11.html.

Ron