[kwlug-disc] Fast transfer protocol?

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Paul Nijjar <paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca> wrote:

>
> This is a Windows question, but Linux solutions would be welcome
> (especially Linux solutions that can be run off a LiveCD).
>
> I am trying to saturate throughput on a gigabit network card.
>
> I am getting the impression that Samba is inherently slow. The
> application used to transfer files does seem to make a difference --
> depending on the (proprietary, Windows) utility I use, I am getting
> transfers that use from 12% to 25% of the gigabit link.
>
> Now I am wondering whether I should try to set up an NFS share or FTP
> server or something on the host I am testing. Has anybody run into
> this issue before? How do you solve it?
>
> - Paul
>

I never did benchmarks for the same of timing the internal network, but
when doing so for other reasons, I would have a file accessible via HTTP
and just use:

$ time wget http://yourserver.example.com/somefile.tar.gz

If the source server has lots of RAM, then the disk (slowest component)
would not be read as much.

The receiving server can use a tmpfs/ramdisk so that it is not writing to
the disk at all.

Another thing you may want to try, but not sure how fast it can generate
data is using /dev/urandom as the source and /dev/null as the destination.
This removes the disk from the equation.

dd if=/dev/urandom ....

Can't think of how to pipe that over a network right now.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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