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FreeBSD network very slow...please help, I'm going nuts!

R

Rainsford

Lifer
I've been trying to get my FreeBSD box to run with samba, and it seemed like I finally got it working. I also played around with portupgrade and upgraded gmake. I noticed that samba was a little slow, and nothing seemed to fix it. So I tried FTP, and it is very, very slow compared to what it used to be. My FreeBSD box and my Winbox are on the same hub, and I've tried multiple ports. FTP used to go at about 6-7 Mbps, now I get around 100k. And my Winbox has no problem downloading at much, much faster speeds from other machines on the network here at school. So, my question is, wtf? SSH has the same transfer slowness, and it was much faster before. I've never had any problems with any OS doing this before, (Linux or Windows for me). I even tried removing Samba, but it didn't help at all. I didn't change any network options at all, and unless Samba did it, I can't figure out what the problem would be. I tried restarting as well, but that didn't help at all. Nothing weird is running (as far as I can tell).

I'm tearing my hair out here, and I'm about ready to reinstall. Any suggestions to help me get this working again? Thanks in advance.
 
Check for tcp errors (if FreeBSD can check it...), look through your logs, run a sniffer when transferring files, replace cables.
 
I tried running TCPdump, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I swapped cables with my windows computer (same problem, windows computer is fine). What exactly would I be looking for in the logs and TCPdump information?
 
Originally posted by: Rainsford
I tried running TCPdump, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I swapped cables with my windows computer (same problem, windows computer is fine). What exactly would I be looking for in the logs and TCPdump information?
Click to expand...

Anomolies 🙂
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: Rainsford
I tried running TCPdump, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I swapped cables with my windows computer (same problem, windows computer is fine). What exactly would I be looking for in the logs and TCPdump information?
Click to expand...

Anomolies 🙂
Click to expand...

Yes, well unfortunitly I don't know enough about FreeBSD to recognize an anomoly when I see one. But I can say that there isn't any extra network activity, so the problem isn't bandwidth. Eh, maybe I should just reinstall and keep better track of what I'm doing so I can at least go back when I mess up.

 
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: Rainsford
I tried running TCPdump, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I swapped cables with my windows computer (same problem, windows computer is fine). What exactly would I be looking for in the logs and TCPdump information?
Click to expand...

Anomolies 🙂
Click to expand...

Yes, well unfortunitly I don't know enough about FreeBSD to recognize an anomoly when I see one. But I can say that there isn't any extra network activity, so the problem isn't bandwidth. Eh, maybe I should just reinstall and keep better track of what I'm doing so I can at least go back when I mess up.
Click to expand...

Did you see any networking anomolies? Dropped packets, collisions? etc?
 
Nope. As far as I can see, it's just normal packet transfers. It's just a lot slower than usual. I looked through the logs and the data from TCPdump for anything that looked like a problem (although, as I said before, I might miss one), but nothing jumped out at me as being wrong. Every program I've tried has worked just fine, except for the slowdown. The strange thing is that it's very consistent, the slowdown isn't random and it never drops above or below a certain amount. If they weren't on the same hub, I'd say it was just a slow network link.
 
Originally posted by: Rainsford
Nope. As far as I can see, it's just normal packet transfers. It's just a lot slower than usual. I looked through the logs and the data from TCPdump for anything that looked like a problem (although, as I said before, I might miss one), but nothing jumped out at me as being wrong. Every program I've tried has worked just fine, except for the slowdown. The strange thing is that it's very consistent, the slowdown isn't random and it never drops above or below a certain amount. If they weren't on the same hub, I'd say it was just a slow network link.
Click to expand...

Reset the hub, see if that helps.
 
That didn't seem to help, but here's something that's kind of weird. I used a number of different programs to transfer files, Samba, FTP and SSH. Transfering files with one or all of them does not seem to affect the speed of any of the programs. For example, FTP speeds stabilized at about 250Kbps. I then began transfering files with SSH and that leveled off at about 30KBps (which is about 250Kbps). The FTP speed staying at almost exactly 250Kbps. I stopped the FTP transfer and the SSH transfer stayed at almost exactly the same speed. It almost seems like for whatever reason, FreeBSD is limiting individual programs to a set amount of bandwidth. I am not sure why that would be, but this seems a little odd.
 
Dunno if its the same, but I had a similiar problem when my network card was set to full-duplex on a half-duplex network. Might want to check the options for bringing the card up.
 
Originally posted by: Bremen
Dunno if its the same, but I had a similiar problem when my network card was set to full-duplex on a half-duplex network. Might want to check the options for bringing the card up.
Click to expand...

Good call. Didnt think about that.

Can you try another hub? Are you running out of memory in the FreeBSD machine and swapping like a madman? Did you setup some ipfw/dummynet bandwidth limitation rules?
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: Bremen
Dunno if its the same, but I had a similiar problem when my network card was set to full-duplex on a half-duplex network. Might want to check the options for bringing the card up.
Click to expand...

Good call. Didnt think about that.

Can you try another hub? Are you running out of memory in the FreeBSD machine and swapping like a madman? Did you setup some ipfw/dummynet bandwidth limitation rules?
Click to expand...

Plenty of memory free, I didn't set up ipfw or any sort of bandwidth limitation rules (unless a program did it for me during the program install), and while I don't have another hub, it seems to work fine for the ports used by the uplink to the rest of the school network and my windows box. I also tried setting it manually to half-duplex 10baseT and it didn't seem to help at all. And besides, it worked before without any special settings, so unless some program changed the settings, I don't see what could have happened.
 
Ok, here's something new. I tried transfering from my windows box to the freebsd box, and it went just as fast as it should (about 30 times faster than transfers the other way). I also checked tcpdump, and transfering from bsd to windows has a "win" of around 50000. Transfers the other way have a "win" of about 17000. I assume this means window size? Is there any way to change that, and could it be the problem?
 
Ok, after trying a lot of different things, I've found the problem. I tried a friend's hub, and, surprise of surprises, there was no problem at all. I don't know why switching ports didn't affect my windows computer, but I guess that will teach me to buy Asante Friendly Net stuff just because it's cheap. 😱
 
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