Topic: File transfer speeds very slow - problem found and fixed!!!!

[Frankdatech]

Help. I have tried everything to get decent file transfer speeds and get a max of about 400k/sec

computer P dual core, 2gig ram, 2 500 gig HDs all new hardware.

I can transfer files from windows clients at close to 10 meg/sec a 50 meg file takes only seconds.
same file to Sme server 3 to 4 minutes. the same speed when copying from the server to a client.

Installed server as file server only, then again as gateway.

Also tried installing on an older comp and got the same speed issues, swapped cables, two comps with different nics in em...

Is this normal transfer speeds? cant be... I must be doing something wrong.
Any help, ideas to try.

[mmccarn]

Some google searching for 'samba file transfer speed' (in various permutations) finds discussions about changing "socket options", about swapping network cards, and (from 2004) about changing kernels.

socket options
============
SME default for socket options:
  socket options = TCP_NODELAY

Options recommended online in a couple discussions I found:
  socket options = TCP_NODELAY TCP_NODELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192 IPTOS_LOWDELAY

network card
===========
The comments I found on this claimed that network cards that work fine in Windows might not support all features under linux due to driver problems - specifically that the NIC might run in PIO mode instead of DMA mode under Linux.  I don't know how to check this, other than to try some different brands of network cards.

kernel
=========
Since the note I found about this is so old, I doubt this is the issue.

[Frankdatech]

OK figured this out....
using ethtool I found my eth0 set to half duplex.

turns out my router was set to auto and the sme server was getting set to half duplex.
set the router to 10/100 full and the sme server would start at this setting..

took me two days of messing around with this to find this. I'm still learning..