Slow Network transfer Speed in Fedora 13

[eyemole]

Hi,
I am running Fedora-13 64 bit on my Dell Laptop, The same Laptop has Windows-7 as well (dual boot system). I have chosen ext3 filesystem while installing fedora.

The file transfer speed in Fedora-13 over the network to my network drive comes out to be not more than 5MBPS.
Where as in Wndows-7 I am getting the speed of around 10~12 MBPS.

Also I found that copying files in USB flash drive is very slow than in Windows-7 . What could be the problem ?

To add it , I have another Laptop Running Ubuntu-10.04 , which also performs network transfers at 10~12 MBPS. So its just the fedora-13 who has this problem. As far as I remember this was not the case with Fedora-12

[Mikko]

This may be a network card driver problem. Are you using wired or wireless? Can you post the 'Ethernet controller' line of the output of lspci? This would make it easier to see if its a known problem with the driver.

[William Haller]

There are many variables. rsync is usually faster than ftp. Encrypted transfers are slower still. Is all your network hardware gigabit capable (and if it is are you running gigabit in Linux).

ethtool eth0

or whatever your port name is will give you link information.

Have you done any parameter optimization in the kernel and drivers?

Upping your txqueuelen may help

ifconfig eth0 txqueuelen 10000

might be a good test.

Does your Windows box do MTU discovery to see if it can send larger packets and have you configured your eth port for big packets locally?

system-config-network, edit the device and set MTU to the largest size valid for your network. I'm sure network manager will do this as well, but I've never made the switch. Be sure to enable MTU discovery if all the boxes aren't running at the same MTU level.

There are tons of configurations you can do to the kernel configuration as well. Examples include

net.ipv4.tcp_mtu_probing = 1
net.core.rmem_max = 8388608
net.core.wmem_max = 8388608
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 8388608
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 8388608
net.ipv4.route.flush = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 1
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 2500
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = cubic
net.ipv4.tcp_abc = 2
net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_adv_win_scale = 7

These can go in /etc/sysctl.conf and were taken from various network speed optimization pages for Linux. You can also edit them directly

cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_adv_win_scale
echo "7" >/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_adv_win_scale

but the changes won't be saved through startup - edit /etc/sysctl.conf when you're happy.

With these settings, I can run around 40 to 50 megabytes per second with rsync even with an MTU of 1500. If I upgraded my hardware on the box on the receiving end to something that handled jumbo packets, it would do better.

[eyemole]

I am using wired ethernet card. Wireless was disabled while doing the transfers. No encryption involved during transfer.

here is lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield DMI (rev 11)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 11)
00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield System Management Registers (rev 11)
00:08.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield Semaphore and Scratchpad Registers (rev 11)
00:08.2 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield System Control and Status Registers (rev 11)
00:08.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Clarksfield/Lynnfield Miscellaneous Registers (rev 11)
00:10.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation QPI Link (rev 11)
00:10.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation QPI Routing and Protocol Registers (rev 11)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 05)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Ibex Peak SMBus Controller (rev 05)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M92 [Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series]
02:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc R700 Audio Device [Radeon HD 4000 Series]
05:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection
09:00.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e822 (rev 01)
09:00.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e230 (rev 01)
09:00.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e852 (rev 01)
09:00.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Device e832 (rev 01)
0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-Core Registers (rev 04)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 04)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Link (rev 04)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Physical 0 (rev 04)
ff:03.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller (rev 04)
ff:03.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Target Address Decoder (rev 04)
ff:03.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Test Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Address Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Rank Registers (rev 04)
ff:04.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 0 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Control Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Address Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Rank Registers (rev 04)
ff:05.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Lynnfield Integrated Memory Controller Channel 1 Thermal Control Registers (rev 04)

I will try the suggested changes in the parameter. and will report back

Thanks.

[Mikko]

Originally Posted by eyemole

0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)

The driver seems to have a bit of a history of problems:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=621378

http://www.google.com/search?q=RTL81...lla.redhat.com

[beaker_]

I've observed X consuming 95% cpu while running headless... sorry on kvm switch, with pc's on intel video cards which bites into my network bandwidth because of encryption (openvpn tunnels). Run level 3 fixes it easy enough. Might be worth a top.

[eyemole]

Thanks Mikko, for pointing out the driver problem for this ethernet card. It seems there is not yet any Official solution from Fedora community for this.
However these days I am facing another problem of overheating with my this laptop. I have sent it back to Dell. woooffff