[kwlug-disc] Fast transfer protocol?

[unsolicited]

Paul Nijjar wrote, On 10/24/2010 12:41 AM:

> So I ended up testing with a program called iperf
> (http://iperf.sourceforge.net) which appears to be a pretty standard
> network testing tool. Because I am lazy I used precompiled versions,
> which meant that there were version issues between the Windows version
> (1.70) and the version on my Knoppix LiveCD (2.0.3 or something).

Looks like 2.0.4-1 is in the cygwin repository.

> I can pretty much max out my gigabit connection using iperf and two
> Windows servers with built-in gigabit cards. Any other combination of
> Windows/Linux maxes out at about 60% usage. 
> 
> Samba is indeed slow. I get better throughput with an FTP server. Disk
> does indeed appear to be a limiting factor. 

Any chance you accumulated numbers for standard windows file sharing? 
Differences would be interesting - would mean there's some 
efficiencies gained within the windows code. No differences would be 
reassuring, and indicate that 'file sharing' is whatever (speed) it is.

> On at least one machine (one with Windows and Linux) I found that
> something in the operating system and/or version of iperf makes the
> results pretty different. 

Can anyone comment ... how much of this difference might be 
attributable to proprietary windows (netcard?) drivers?

- I'm guessing there are no proprietary linux drivers available to be 
played with in Paul's test. (Unlike, say, proprietary nvidia drivers.)