Syslinux - Dec 2011 - pxelinux 4.10-pre17 HTTP performance (cptime)

Hi,

thanks for writing cptime, after manually adding it to the Makefile of a
lwip git checkout it compiled fine (same about prdhcp) (only isohybrid
complained about a missing uuid/uuid.h)...

I have a 64bit VM with VMXNET3 and go there this result:

[image: cptime.png]

(can everybody see the picture?)

The download of a 180MB large file (Parted Magic initrd) takes between 60
and 72 seconds, which is about 2.6 to 2.3 MiB/s.

Can this go any faster? Or is this the most that we can get out of a
preboot environment?

BTW, what is the meaning of the +0, +1, -1 lines? Maybe you add there some
hint to make it self-explanatory.

Thanks for the great work,
Schlomo
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cptime.png
Type: image/png
Size: 14313 bytes
Desc: not available
URL:
<http://www.zytor.com/pipermail/syslinux/attachments/20111230/73a11e22/attachment.png>

On 12/30/2011 04:26 AM, Schlomo Schapiro wrote:
> Hi,
>
> thanks for writing cptime, after manually adding it to the Makefile of a
> lwip git checkout it compiled fine (same about prdhcp) (only isohybrid
> complained about a missing uuid/uuid.h)...
>
> I have a 64bit VM with VMXNET3 and go there this result:
>
> [image: cptime.png]
>
> (can everybody see the picture?)
>
> The download of a 180MB large file (Parted Magic initrd) takes between 60
> and 72 seconds, which is about 2.6 to 2.3 MiB/s.
>
> Can this go any faster? Or is this the most that we can get out of a
> preboot environment?
What protocol are you using?

It depends greatly on the quality of the preboot environment.  I have 
seen gigabit cards which will not negotiate anything above 10 Mbps from 
the PXE stack, and others which will do 75 MiB/s sustained.

	-hpa

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 07:26, Schlomo Schapiro <schlomo at schapiro.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> thanks for writing cptime, after manually adding it to the Makefile of a
> lwip git checkout it compiled fine (same about prdhcp) (only isohybrid
> complained about a missing uuid/uuid.h)...
Fix already submitted and pending.
> I have a 64bit VM with VMXNET3 and go there this result:
Guest OS hint shouldn't matter much.  The VMXNET3 may.
> [image: cptime.png]
>
> (can everybody see the picture?)
Attached but sufficient.
> The download of a 180MB large file (Parted Magic initrd) takes between 60
> and 72 seconds, which is about 2.6 to 2.3 MiB/s.
>
> Can this go any faster? Or is this the most that we can get out of a
> preboot environment?
Is this via HTTP or TFTP?  I'm betting the latter and you've got about
double the best performance I've seen.
> BTW, what is the meaning of the +0, +1, -1 lines? Maybe you add there some
> hint to make it self-explanatory.
It's due to the low precision of the timer that was available when I
first wrote it (55 ms per tick, iirc).  I should change it to not put
that out, depending on the number of ticks (ie, if it's over something
like 100 or 1000).

-- 
-Gene