[mdlug] Maxing out on 10/100 LAN

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Mon, 2011-09-26 at 11:46 -0400, Dan Pritts wrote:
> I wasn't entirely clear below about "samba chattiness."  the smb protocol 
> does lots of conversations back and forth, it looks kind of like this:
> send data
> ask did you get it
> wait for positive answer
> send more data
> this is at the SMB protocol layer, which is stupid because TCP already does it
> for you .  but that's how it works.
> I'm sure there is tuning you can do on this but i've never done it.
> first, i assume that you are all in the same building or local campus.  if not, 
> then note that network latency can drastically slow SMB file access - that chattiness
> really kills you there.

+1

But note that SMBv2 manages this much more efficiently than SMB/CIFS.
Windows 7 + a recent Samba will do the same work with less traffic and
fewer exchanges than Windows XP and/or older Samba.

You want to be on the Samba 3.6.x line.  

And make sure you remove any silly / misguided/ ill-advised
"performance" hacks like trying to tweak maximum read size or manually
setting socket options.  Samba and the kernel know better than you.