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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!ix.netcom.com!enews.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!neteng!lm From: lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux. TCP and NFS performance? Date: 4 Apr 1997 18:33:31 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 54 Message-ID: <5i3hhr$6op@fido.asd.sgi.com> References: <3338c02c.178408318@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <5hq253$bfl@hpindda.cup.hp.com> <33426ea3.35446782@netnews.worldnet.att.net> <5hui59$8ru@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5i26qi$6cs$1@dept100.it-ias.depaul.edu> Reply-To: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: neteng.engr.sgi.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38518 Jim Leonard (root@boxotrix.it-ias.depaul.edu) wrote: : In article <5hui59$8ru@fido.asd.sgi.com>, : Larry McVoy <lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com> wrote: : >Tim White (osas@worldnet.att.net) wrote: : >: at Intel architecture. Several are Linux guys at home..so they are : >: predisposed in that direction. I've seen several posts on relative : >: tcp/nfs performance numbers and was under the impression NFS : >: under FreeBSD was 2-3 times faster. : > : >My guess is that FreeBSD NFS is much faster, especially with 100baseT : >networks. The Linux NFS server is a user level process (one process) : >so there are two extra bcopies that happen for that server. : It is much faster, even without 100baseT networks. We have a 10baseT : network here, and Linux NFS is pulling about 20-50K a second from a : Sparc Server 1000 one router hop away... FreeBSD is pulling 300-500K a : second, easy. This is not what I see at all. Test setup: neteng is an SGI server (big disk farm, etc) bucket is another SGI server through a couple of routers linux is a P5@133, Dec Tulip card runnin at 10Mbits. # Create a 20MB file. neteng ~/data lmdd of=20m move=20m fsync=1 20.00 MB in 2.46 secs, 8.13 MB/sec #Read the file over NFS on Linux linux ~/data lmdd if=20m bs=64k 20.97 MB in 20.00 secs, 1.05 MB/sec #Read the file from bucket, which is this far away: linux /mnt/lm traceroute bucket traceroute to bitbucket.engr.sgi.com (150.166.36.20), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 gate5-humpty.engr.sgi.com (150.166.75.48) 1.842 ms 1.762 ms 3.137 ms 2 150.166.100.16 (150.166.100.16) 6.129 ms 3.554 ms 4.813 ms 3 bitbucket.engr.sgi.com (150.166.36.20) 3.504 ms 5.562 ms 3.027 ms linux /mnt/lm lmdd if=20m bs=64k 20.97 MB in 31.24 secs, 0.67 MB/sec So that says that on a local net, Linux's NFS performance can be the wire speed, that through routers it can drop to 670KB/sec. I think your test setup must be botched somehow. There is no reason that any modern system can't saturate a 10baseT wire. I'm not saying that Linux's NFS is great, it's not, but it is certainly good enough for 10Mbit nets. I suspect that FreeBSD's server side is better under high load though. -- --- Larry McVoy lm@sgi.com http://reality.sgi.com/lm (415) 933-1804