TCP/IP Network Tuning: IPNetTuner 1.4

[JDW]

I currently use my MacCon PDS Ethernet 10-baseT card in my SE/30 to network with my OS 10.4 G4 Cube and to browse the web. My link to the internet is a fiber optic line capable of 100Mb/sec max throughput, which is 10 times higher than the 10-Base-T link to my SE/30. Overall, my setup is fairly speedy in light of the SE/30's speed (the slowest part of my network), but I've often wondered if Open Transport is appropriately tuned for performance on this rather "high speed" Ethernet network. (I use Open Transport 1.3 on my SE/30.)

While browsing the web today, I came across Sustainable Softwork's IPNetTuner 1.4, which has a 68k version. They also offer IPNetMonitor 2.2.1, which also has a 68k version. (The Monitor tool of IPNetMonitor allows checking of TCP/IP speeds.)

Since they have a 21 day trial, I downloaded both apps and tried them out. IPNetTuner comes with a couple ready-made tuning scripts for testing. The one named "Cable Modem" is the fastest among them and is the one I used for testing. I ran tests with IPNetMonitor running and I did see some higher "peak" speeds when running Netscape 2.0 to browse the net, although I didn't notice much difference in Ethernet networking to another Mac. But IPNetTuner allows many tuning options, so perhaps I just need to tweak some other key settings, hence my post here today.

As a complete ignoramus when it comes to TCP/IP and tuning, I was wondering if any of you have tried this software and/or would know what tuning settings would be best to maximize OT performance on my SE/30?

Many thanks.

 

[JDW]

With two months having passed with nary a reply to my post above, I again wish to call upon those of you "in the networking know" for advice.

I appreciate your time!

 

[TylerEss]

Well, there's that whole thing about setting the window-size to be the same as the product of the bandwidth and the round-trip-time; making sure your MTU is as high as possible will help too. This is assuming you've got large, long-living TCP connections that are passing a lot of data.

That's what I know about tuning TCP connections in general... there are *lots* of sites on the web with more information, but a lot of it isn't going to apply because the SE/30 is so slow. Really, the best settings will be the ones that work best, whether they follow "the rules" or not.

 

[Charlieman]

Quite frankly, JDW, early versions of Open Transport were flaky. Apple's first implementation of DHCP, for example, was completely broken (first hand experience at a university). On the plus side, the engineers were very helpful and always advised on appropriate OT upgrades. On the negative side, I'm sure that much more time was spent on bug fixes than performance tuning.

TCP/IP performance tuning on an SE/30 will deliver small benefits for simple network applications (IRC, FTP, mail) where network speed is the primary limiter. (Even for an accelerated SE/30 which I presume for JDW.) For a web browser, TCP/IP tuning will deliver more marginal benefits because data delivery is much quicker than data processing (ie rendering a web page). First generation browsers (Mosaic, Netscape 1.x) wait until all/most of the data has been delivered before trying to render the page. Later browsers, possibly including Netscape 2.x, attempt to render data as it is received.

Personally I don't consider TCP/IP tuning as a serious problem. For 68K Macs, the physical connections and requirement for secure protocols are more significant. When the world switches to SFTP rather FTP, for example, I won't be able to connect to Secure FTP servers because the software does not exist.

 

[macclassic]

Have you tried running a VNC client on the SE fed by your faster machine?

I have BasiliskII and PearPC on a PC laptop and can operate OS X on Basilisk (OS 7.5.5) using VNC which has plenty of settings to play with.

I once ran Softwindows 95 on one Mac by Localtalk and Program Linking between two Mac's just for the hell of it, now that was slow.