Slow Network Liteon (netgear) and tweaking MTU.

[Mike McQuade]

For what its worth, I noticed in the mail list archives
that some people have seen poor performance with the
tulip cards.

I have a Netgear FA-310tx card, it has the Lite-on chip.

The card is in a P-II 333, RH-6.0 box, 384MB ram, I have
observed that the network in slow to send data out of
the machine (not good for a web server). Seems to take
data on FTP uploads with much better performance.

I did play around with setting the MTU on the card, this
had some interesting results.


I tested by transferring a 125k file via FTP (over 256k dsl).

MTU SIZE	Time1	Time2	Time3	Time4 	AVG Time

512		5.7	5.9	5.6	6.8	6.0 sec
1024		8.4	16.4	6.0	6.3	9.13 sec
1500		9.5	12.4	5.4	9.9	9.30 sec


I don't know why that is so much better (or at least
more consistant) with the smaller MTU.


Anyhow, has anyone tested the latest Tulip driver for
performance with the Lite-on based cards ?

Any clues to make the card perform better ?

I had the machine here locally on a 10 base-t hub, it
was fast in both directions, now its on a 100 base Full duplex
switch, it has some problems...


here is my info:

Linux 2.2.9

tulip.c:v0.89H 5/23/98 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
eth0: Lite-On 82c168 PNIC at 0xd000, 00 a0 cc 3f 7b 3f, IRQ 10.
eth0:  MII transceiver found at MDIO address 1, config 1000 status 782d.
eth0:  Advertising 01e1 on PHY 1, previously advertising 01e1.
   PCI latency timer (CFLT) is unreasonably low at 0.  Setting to 64 clocks.

eth0: Changing PNIC configuration to full-duplex, CSR6 816e0200.


Thanks

Mike