I just bought a gigabit switch from Dell on that fantastic deal they had last week. Now I'm updating all my other hardware to take advantage. Most of my machines handle it already, but my fileserver still has a 10/100 NIC. The problem is that it's a K6-2/500, and I'm wondering if it can even handle that kind of bandwidth. I know 486s and such couldn't handle 100mbit, would it be the same with my K6 and gigabit?
K6-2 and gigabit
- Thread starter tulmad
- Start date
Seems very unlikely. Maybe with a NIC that doesn't rely on the CPU for muh processing but I doubt it.
My testing demonstrated that a P3-550 could barely sustain 13MB/s, even with a very nice Intel server gigabit nic.
Hrm, maybe I'll begin work on that mini-itx fileserver earlier than I thought. Or at least start thinking of something else. If your P3/500 can't handle it, I have to wonder if an 800mhz C3 could.
Its all buried inside the Big Giga Thread here, but I'll copy and paste my stuff. This is all Windows SMB transfers, since that's what was important to me at the time. In July I was testing a dual Opteron server and it was sustaining 83MB/s (total) to the clients while reading from our SAN.
Basic test:
Copy a folder containing 4.12GB of information (128 files, 15 subfolders) from the server to each client.
Server 1:
P3-1000
1GB pc133
Intel Pro/1000 MT server adapter in a 64bit 66mhz pci slot.
4x36GB scsi drives in Raid-5
Windows Server 2003
Client 1:
P4-2.8Ghz
2GB pc2100
Integrated Intel gigabit adapter
80GB ide harddrive
Windows XP Pro
Client 2:
Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz
2GB pc3200
Integrated Intel gigabit adapter
3x36GB scsi drives in Raid-0
Windows XP Pro
Client 3:
Dual Xeon 1.4Ghz
2GB pc133
Onboard Broadcom gigabit adapter
4x72GB scsi drives in Raid-5
Windows Server 2000
Client 4:
Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz
1GB pc3200
Integrated Intel gigabit adapter
80GB IDE harddrive
Windows XP Pro
Client 5:
P3-500
384mb pc100
Intel Pro/1000 MT Server Adapter (in 32bit pci slot)
10GB ide harddrive
Windows 2000
Leaving Server Peak transfer (clients 1-4 copying folder at the same time):
76.1MB/s
Leaving Server Sustained transfer (clients 1-4 copying folder at the same time):
55MB/s
Granted these are fairly high-end machines, but my testing is for the purposes of pushing our gigabit network to the limit. And I'm not even sure I've done that yet. I'll be doing some write testing, simultaneous read+write, adding in some low end clients, and some between client transfer tests later this afternoon.
If there is some specific test any of you guys would like to see, let me know. I should have the hardware available to do just about anything.
*EDIT*
Early write results:
I had the 3 clients write the 4GB folder back to the server (seperate destinations of course) at the same time. With a single client it peaked at 40.2MB/s, but held a steady 25MB/s. With multiple clients it peaked at 44.6MB/s, with a steady 35MB/s. I think we're maxing out the write performance on this older raid-5 array. I'll get to testing a newer raid-5 array later, along with multiple clients to a 3 x 15k drive raid-0 array.
From Client 4, pushing to Client 1:
Peak: 41.9MB/s
Average: 25MB/s
Looked like it was sustaining 35MB/s fairly easily during the large file section of the copy, but it was the many folders with many 10MB files that brought the overall rate down.
From Client 1, pushing to Client 2:
Peak: 46.8MB/s
Average: 30MB/s
Was pretty consistent through both the large files and the folders.
*EDIT - More "pushing" numbers*
Multiple clients pushing to Client 2 (using integrated adapter):
Peak: 46.1MB/s
Average: 30MB/s
Multiple clients pushing to Client 2 (using Intel Pro/1000 MT Server Adapter in 64bit PCI slot):
Peak: 52.1MB/s
Average: 31MB/s
Client 5:
Pulling from Server:
Peak - 13.5MB/s
Average - 11MB/s
Pushing to Server:
Peak - 18.6MB/s
Average - 14MB/s
It fully supports 64- or 32-bit PCI-X 1.0 or PCI 2.2 buses, with lower cpu utilization than the Intel Pro/1000 MT desktop adapter I had around at the same time. I don't have any of my Pro/1000 MT vs. Pro/1000 MT Server numbers around anymore, so I can't tell you the exact difference.
While watching the machine try and keep up, it seemed to be more harddrive limited than anything. Lots of disk thrashing trying to keep up. It was an old Dell OptiPlex GX100 with its original 5400rpm drive. Not exactly a speed demon.
So maybe an older CPU with newer parts (I/O specifically) wouldn't do so poorly. Not that it matters, chances are the k6-2 system has worse internals than your p3.
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
So maybe an older CPU with newer parts (I/O specifically) wouldn't do so poorly. Not that it matters, chances are the k6-2 system has worse internals than your p3.
Well, it's actually a newer disk (160GB 7200RPM 8MB cache) attached to a PCI ATA/100 card. Yes, I'm wasting some throughput on the disk by attaching it to that card, but up until now that didn't matter too much. The board is very old FIC PA-2013 (http://www.active-hardware.com.../mainboard/pa2013.htm), which had UDMA/33 IDE on-board.
tulmad, do some big file transfers onto and off of your file server. If your throughput is significantly less than 100Mb/s, then going to gigabit will not help because it's not your bottleneck. Note that if you have a crappy 10/100 NIC (e.g., RealTek) then replacing that with a gigabit NIC will be an improvement even at 100Mb/s due to architectural improvements on the NIC itself.
I'd be surprised if going to gigabit helps.
I'd be surprised if going to gigabit helps.
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