A friendly reminder that MacTCP performance is godawful - OpenTransport is nearly 3x faster

[aperezbios]

If you have 6-8 megabytes of RAM in your cmassic Mac, here's why you should use OpenTransport instead of MacTCP...

On my Quadra 650, with 40 megabytes of RAM, System 7.5.3R2, using the built-in AAUI Ethernet interface.

Rrunning MacTCP 2.0.6, when downloading a multi-megabyte file from a local HTTP server on my LAN, I get a measly 40 kilobytes/sec.

On the _exact same machine_, with OpenTransport 1.1.2 installed and in use, downloading the exact same multi-megabyte file, the download speed is stable at about 115-120 kilobytes/sec, which is nearly three times the throughput. I also tried with OpenTransport 1.3, with the same results.

 

[chelseayr]

aperez but of course it should be noted that <7.5 is a different story in what is supported tho. no?

 

[aperezbios]

aperez but of course it should be noted that <7.5 is a different story in what is supported tho. no?

Of course it is, but that's not what my post was about, or intended to address.

 

[bdurbrow]

Egads... what did they write that in, Integer Basic? Even allowing for mis-tuning of the stack, that's miserable.

 

[Danamania]

Of course it is, but that's not what my post was about, or intended to address.

fwiw, OT1.3 brings similar improvements to at least as far back as 7.1, too.

 

[Unknown_K]

The fastest networking speed I seen was from a WGS95 (PDS SCSI card with full cache) running A/UX 3.11 and either a IIfx or Quadra running the last version of OT. Its been ages but I think the speed was over 200KB/s sustained.

 

[aperezbios]

The fastest networking speed I seen was from a WGS95 (PDS SCSI card with full cache) running A/UX 3.11 and either a IIfx or Quadra running the last version of OT. Its been ages but I think the speed was over 200KB/s sustained.

....which is still a measly 1.6 megabits. Classic MacOS network stack never, ever performed well, and Apple never seemed to care.

 

[mikes-macs]

On the contrary,
Considering that file sizes were much smaller when these Macs were in use, BUS speeds were slower, IO on HDD was slow, I'd say 1.6 megabits is not too bad, and at times a software stack conflict error that that goes un-noticed by the OS but hinders performance. When you compare it to dialup over a serial modem of that era, I'm sure you'll agree, it's not bad at all.

 

[aperezbios]

On the contrary,
Considering that file sizes were much smaller when these Macs were in use, BUS speeds were slower, IO on HDD was slow, I'd say 1.6 megabits is not too bad, and at times a software stack conflict error that that goes un-noticed by the OS but hinders performance. When you compare it to dialup over a serial modem of that era, I'm sure you'll agree, it's not bad at all.

Sure, it's "enough" in the context of slow-speed serial links, but that wasn't really the point of my original post. OpenTansport is faster, that's a simple fact. There's nothing wrong with using MacTCP as long as you don't care about throughput.

 

[mikes-macs]

Understood, I use both actually. Sadly, AppleTalk Internet Router will not work with OpenTransport. But my Mac SE/30 flies with OpenTransport 1.3 and Mac OS 8.1 Asante SC EN.

 

[olePigeon]

I'd pay real money for a new MacTCP compatible TCP/IP stack.

 

[Paralel]

Pushing my 540c to the limit with OT 1.3.1 the best I was able to get was 2.04 Megabits/s on a hardwired ethernet connection. Back in the day that would have been flying.

I'd pay real money for a new MacTCP compatible TCP/IP stack.

Well, at least we have OT 1.3.1 for 7.1.1+ now. It's an improvement over OT 1.1.2.