I would have to disagree w/ you on the reason for A/UX ftp being faster 
than MacOS or netatalk: ftp uses TCP/IP. Apple file sharing uses AFP/DDP 
(Apletalk). 

First of all, IP allows up to 1.5kb datagrams, DDP allows a max of 600 
bytes. This give you about 1/3 as much overhead w/ TCP. Second, TCP has a 
much better windowing mechanism. It can have many more outstanding 
packets (those which have not been acknowledged). AFP *must* send an ack 
packet at at for at least every 8 packets.

Combine these together, and what you get is that Appletalk spends a lot 
of time sending headers, and sitting around waiting for acks, compared to 
TCP.

In order to have a fair test when compared w/ A/UX, you'd really have to 
be FTPing to the netbsd boxes, and install Peter Lewis' NetPresenz or 
FTPd on your MacOS.

-Capt Avram Dorfman
Chief, Network Operations
email: dorfman@pentagon.mil
(last resort email: avram@pobox.com)

:%s/\(do|-<\)/\1\1/g
:1,$d

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Lee Larson wrote:

> Here are a few comparisons between NetBSD+netatalk and Mac OS file 
> sharing. The setup is 10Base-T ethernet on a network with two ci's, and 
> fx and a PowerBase 240. I ran Helios LANtest on the PowerBase. Here are 
> the configurations of the machines:
> 
> (1) One ci is running NetBSD 1.3 and netatalk 1.4b2. Its name is Sauron.
> 
> (2) The other ci is running Mac OS 7.6.1 and Open Transport 1.1.2.
> 
> (3) The fx is running Mac OS 7.6.1 and Open Transport 1.1.2.
> 
> (4) The PowerBase has Mac OS 8 and Open Transport 1.2.
> 
> The results:
> 
> Action                             Sauron      ci        fx
> 
> create 100 files @20K (sec)        58.56     35.93     25.46
> open/close 100 files (sec)          7.74      7.07      5.53
> remove 100 files (sec)             13.09      8.51      6.51
> write 3 MB to a file (KB/sec)      49.44     86.03    130.72
> read 3 MB from a file (KB/sec)    108.28     67.67    117.72
> lock/unlock 4000 times (sec)       99.84    109.05    101.08
> read directory 320 files (sec)      4.66      1.29      0.93
> 
> This was done on a 10base-T ethernet with only those machines and a 
> printer installed. All results are from averaging 10 runs of each test. 
> Both the ci's a pretty much the same hardware. I get almost three times 
> the speed from Sauron, if I transfer files by ftp from the PowerBase.
> 
> As a side note, running A/UX 3.02 on the fx gives over 300 KB/sec via ftp 
> between the PowerBase and the fx. I think this is because A/UX knows how 
> to take advantage of DMA on the fx, while Mac OS does not.
> 
> Lee Larson       http://www.louisville.edu/~lmlars01/        (502)852-6826
> Mathematics Department, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292 USA
>