*BSD News Article 75709


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From: iverson@cisco.com (Tim Iverson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FTP performance with pppd
Date: 8 Aug 1996 22:20:50 GMT
Organization: cisco
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <4udp82$69m@cronkite.cisco.com>
References: <32037C10.41C67EA6@solidsys.com> <32041EE6.8F6@www.play-hookey.com> <4u1rrj$6b2@ucthpx.uct.ac.za> <32090B80.2781E494@www.play-hookey.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rottweiler-ether.cisco.com

In article <32090B80.2781E494@www.play-hookey.com>,
Ken Bigelow  <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> wrote:
|S Marquard wrote:
|> I have got throughput of about 2700bps using pppd, vs 3100bps using ijppp
|> (with 28.8 modems). Adjusting the mtu/mru values hasn't helped.
|> I'd also like to know what the difference is.
|
|mtu/mru = maximum transmit/receive unit. This is basically the block
|size for your TCP/IP packets. If you don't specify something smaller,
|default is typically 1500 bytes per block. On a dialup link, large
|blocks can cause slowdowns and increased re-transmits if the line is
|noisy or collisions or other problems occur. A smaller block size
|reduces the likelihood of error, and also the size of the re-transmitted

A minor note -- you can't get collisions on a dialup line (full duplex and
point to point) and modem error correction should guarantee a clean line.

In general, a larger MTU will increase throughput on transfer protocols and
increase latency on interactive protocols (vice-versa for smaller MTU).  If
you only use a single network protocol at a time, use 1500.  If you telnet
with ftp in the background, you'll probably want to use something much
smaller (576 is a favorite for many people).


- Tim Iverson
  iverson@lionheart.com