At 12:44 AM +0200 2/25/03, Arto Huusko wrote:

>I've tested this simply with FTP by downloading syssrc.tgz from both
>i386 machines to the alpha. From the slower i386 I could get ~2M/s,
>but from the faster machine the speed dropped quickly from ~2M/s
>to ~500k/s (and maybe even lower) and the number of error messages
>went up. From one i386 to the other the transfer speed is about
>2M/s. The slower is only a 100MHz Pentium, so maybe it's maxed out.

Did you test both upload and download? With duplex mismatches, speed 
will be normal in one direction but abyssmal in the other direction.

>I'm running all the NICs in 100baseTX-FDX mode. The alpha is an
>AlphaStation 500/266 and it runs a 1.6K kernel from mid-December.
>The machines are connected to each other via a D-Link DES1008D
>switch. There are no other machines currently connected to the
>network.

My guess is that there is a duplex mismatch between your Alpha and 
your switch. You should never lock down the switch or the NIC to a 
particular duplex setting, but should let them autonegotiate. Locking 
down speed is acceptable, but locking duplex at the switch violates 
the spec. On Apple/Macintosh hardware, if connected to a switch that 
is locked to a particular duplex setting (whether 1/2 or FDX), the 
NIC will always default back to 1/2 (and until recently, mediaopts 
wasn't supported in the OSX drivers).

Just my thoughts,
Mike
-- 
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