Topic: Slow thru-put with cable modem and e-smith

[Derek Greenfield]

Has anyone experienced any problems with the performance of a cable connection with e-smith? When I first installed the system everything ran fine and was lightning fast, but it seems that over the time the server has been operational that the thru-put and cable performance has decreased significantly. It absolutely crawls now. If anyone has some advice or nows whats going on please help!

Thanks in advance...
Derek

[Charlie Brady]

Derek Greenfield wrote:

> Has anyone experienced any problems with the performance of a
> cable connection with e-smith? When I first installed the
> system everything ran fine and was lightning fast, but it seems
> that over the time the server has been operational that the
> thru-put and cable performance has decreased significantly.

Many, many people, whether using e-smith or not, have reported slow
performance with cable modem systems. Remember that the total bandwidth of a cable modem system is shared between the user population, and if the user population grows, and their bandwidth utilisation increases, then your performance will decrease.

I know of no limitation with the e-smith system which will limit your cable modem performance or which will degrade over time.

regards

Chalrie

[Derek Greenfield]

Charlie Brady wrote:

> Many, many people, whether using e-smith or not, have reported
> slow performance with cable modem systems. Remember that the
> total bandwidth of a cable modem system is shared between the
> user population, and if the user population grows, and their
> bandwidth utilisation increases, then your performance will
> decrease.
>
> I know of no limitation with the e-smith system which will
> limit your cable modem performance or which will degrade over
> time.

I agree with what you say about the shared bandwidth, I own my own computer business and have to explain to people constantly about network performance with dsl, dial-ups, cable, etc. The problem here tho, is if I run the modem direct to one of the windows machines the performance is great, if I re-install the server package, it runs great, it's over a period of time using the server, that performance starts to degrade. I've tried solutions using every kind of nic I have laying around, smc's, 3com's, realtec's, winbond's, ne2000's, a 10/100 hub, a 10mip hub, straight 100 mip hub, etc, and the same thing occurs everytime. I've had Time Warners techs ( I use RoadRunner ) come test the line 3 or 4 times, but to no avail, same thing happens : after a period of a week or so, performance drops like a rock.

Derek

[Michael McKinnon]

Are you using web caching?  Maybe HDD access is slow on your computer or not enough RAM.

Michael.

[Orville Carter]

Derek,

We have installed E-smith as server/gateway, and web server on my home/office lan.
E-smith has been running for several months with no drop in performance.
We have also done a few installs at other locations. No drop in performance has
been reported by any system.
My servers all have dual PII's and a minimum of 128 meg ram.

My only slight drop in speed occurs when my teenage daughter plays streaming music videos on my dsl. AAARRRRRGGGGGG! It eats up about 400kbs of my 768kbs at home.
Michael may have a point about not enough ram.

Orville


Michael McKinnon wrote:

> Are you using web caching?  Maybe HDD access is slow on your
> computer or not enough RAM.
>
> Michael.

[Derek Greenfield]

Orville Carter wrote:

> We have installed E-smith as server/gateway, and web server on
> my home/office lan. E-smith has been running for several months
> with no drop in performance. We have also done a few installs
> at other locations. No drop in performance has been reported by
> any system. My servers all have dual PII's and a minimum of 128
> meg ram.
>
> My only slight drop in speed occurs when my teenage daughter
> plays streaming music videos on my dsl. AAARRRRRGGGGGG! It eats
> up about 400kbs of my 768kbs at home. Michael may have a point
> about not enough ram.

Must just be something weird on my end and with my setup .. no tthe best server, but not the worst (hardware wise) .. the system acts as a firewall/gateway only abd has 2 computers feeding off of it.

> Michael McKinnon wrote:
>
> > Are you using web caching?  Maybe HDD access is slow on
> your > computer or not enough RAM. > > Michael.
>

Not using web caching at all ... and the hdd is scsi, so speed there isn't an issue ... as stated above might just be something screwy with a nic or something, tho I just called Time Warner to have them come out and check the line and node again... guess we'll see what happens.

Thanks guys...
Derek

[Charlie Brady]

Derek Greenfield wrote:

> Must just be something weird on my end and with my setup .. no
> tthe best server, but not the worst (hardware wise) ..

The only performance issue that we are aware of in low end hardware is a system memory exhaustion if large email messages are sent simultaneously to a large number of recipients.  But that is then an acute problem, not a chronic slowdown.

It would help people to guess what your problem might be if you can be more specific about what exect performance slowdown you are seeing. Do you see a change in ping time to remote sites? Is access to the e-smith-manager slower? Is ping time on your LAN any different? Are you seeing packet loss? Etc, etc.

Regards

Charlie

[Derek Greenfield]

Charlie Brady wrote:

> The only performance issue that we are aware of in low end
> hardware is a system memory exhaustion if large email messages
> are sent simultaneously to a large number of recipients.  But
> that is then an acute problem, not a chronic slowdown.

This wouldn't be (and isn't) a problem as this is just a home network with only 3 systems connected. All 3 systems are high end and just use the server as a firewall/gateway to share the cable connection. The e-smith server itself is just an amd 5x86/133 with 64 meg of ram, 2 nic's, a video card and a 1.2 gig scsi2 hdd, and is used as nothing more than a firewall/gateway to share the internet connection between the other 3 systems. There is usually no more than 2 systems being used at any time.

> It would help people to guess what your problem might be if you
> can be more specific about what exect performance slowdown you
> are seeing. Do you see a change in ping time to remote sites?
> Is access to the e-smith-manager slower? Is ping time on your
> LAN any different? Are you seeing packet loss? Etc, etc.

The problem seems to be slow connections to other sites, and slow transfers using ftp services. When I first install (or re-install) the e-smith package, the speed on the net is really fast (much much much faster than sharing using windows based connection sharing .. gotta love linux and it's low overhead), but seems to degrade over a period of time especially after all the requests for a renewed ip from the dhcp server on roadrunner's end (my ip address never changes, but according to RR, it's not static .. been the same ip for 2 years now ... hmmm ). Thats when the slow downs occur .. slow connection times to web pages or slow ftp tranfers. I don't have any packet losses, but way more collisions and slower connection times.  I did have the tech's from RR come out and check the line again, but I have no idea if they found anything, because I wasn't home at the time, so i guess i'll have to play around and see if I have the same problems .. I'll notify as I find out more.

Thanks..
Derek