samba - May 1998 - Slow Network performance with ArcView and Samba

Hi,

We are experiencing a very slow network when loading files from the Samba server
(Samba V1.9.18p4 on Digital Unix V4.0B). A file transfer of a 5 MB file from the
samba server to a NT Workstation with FTP takes about 10 seconds. The transfer
of the same file with using the NT-Explorer takes also about 10 seconds. The
load of the same file (it is a tiff file) with a application called
"Imaging" takes 10 seconds too. The load of this file with the
application "ArcView" (from the company ESRI) takes about 100
seconds.

Since the endusers only use the ArcView application, they are very annoyed with
the slow performance of the samba server. If we put the file on a NT Server the
load times are in every case only 10 seconds.

I have tried to set different parameters in the smb.conf file (read prediction,
read size, read raw, locking, oplocks, strict locking, share modes), but nothing
gave a little bit of success!

It seems that the application ArcView reads small packets of the data file
(between 4KB and 8KB with SMBreadX ), and this slows down the whole process of
reading the 5MB file. The application NT-Explorer reads large data packets of
64KB with SMBreadX.

Can anyone give an advise for setting which parameter or compile option?


thanks in advance


Rene Landert
Bundesamt fur Kommunikation
Informatik & Organisation
Zukunftstrasse 44
2503 Biel/Bienne
E-Mail: rene.landert@bakom.admin.ch
FAX: +41 32 327 55 55
Telefon: +41 32 327 58 98

Rene,

I've no idea if this will help, but we had a problem with very slow
perfromance with the Eudora mail program. The users' mail boxes were in
their home directory trees on a Samba share on a Sun running SunOS. Other
users, whose home directories were on Solaris Suns had no problems with speed.

I cured this by seeting -DFAST_SHARE_MODES in the makefile for the SunOS
machines. It is already defined by default for the Solaris opsys, but not
for SunOS. I also have "socket options = TCP_NODELAY" set in the SunOS
configuration file.

Maybe this will help?

Paul