Painfully slow 5K/s LAN with 3Com Etherlink III & Amiga 1200 3.1

[markpaterson]

My setup is…
Amiga 1200 with Kickstart 3.0
Workbench 3.1 on CF card (a lean self install, not a bloated ready made CF image).
ACA1221 Accelerator (standard 9MB config)
3Com Etherlink III PCMCIA Card – with 3c589 driver
FTP server running on Mac OS X Server 10.11

I just purchased a *brand new* 3Com Etherlink III, still sealed in the original box. New old stock I assume.

I can ping my FTP server or google, and get decent responses, around 2-4ms. However, I’m getting *painfully* slow LAN speeds over FTP (which I’ve heard should be the fastest way to connect). I struggle to get more than a 5K/s connection, either from single files or directories. It often takes about 10 seconds to copy even a simple small readme.

Here’s what i’ve tried so far:
* 2 different FTP clients. AmiFTP and Directory Opus 5 FTP.
* 4 different TCP stacks. MiamiDX, AmiTCP, Genesis & Roadshow (with a clean install for each -i.e. rolling back my CF card from an earlier backed up image).
* 2 different ethernet cables.
* Plugging directly into a switch
* Plugging directly into my router
* C:CardPatch in startup-sequence
* C:CardReset in startup-sequence

I’m curious to try EasyNet, but for some maddening reason it’s only available on physical CD… FROM EUROPE. Which is like a 2-3 week shipping minimum. Pretty pathetic to not offer a download version on 2016. I doubt I would fair any better with EasyNet, but i’m curious to try AmigaKit’s PCMCIA card / EasyNet combo, if it ever comes back in stock.

So… what am I doing wrong? I know that the Amiga’s PCMCIA slot isn’t the fastest, but jeez it almost feels like it would be faster to transcribe the 1s and 0s by hand at this point. I know it’s only a 10Mb card too, but even with my CPU speed (or lack of) and ethernet overhead, I should be getting at least 1 Mb per second, right?

[demolition]

It should be faster yes, but 1MB/s is pushing it for 10Mbps. If I remember correctly, I think I got around 500 kB/s in my A1200 with ACA1231 through AmiFTP and AmiTCP. I would expect at least 200 kB/s with the ACA1221.

Is CardPatch being run correctly? Is the system generally slow when the Ethernet card is connected and running?

[idrougge]

One megabit (Mb), yes, but not one megabyte (MB).
What does your AmiTCP config look like?

[jPV]

Originally Posted by markpaterson

I know it’s only a 10Mb card too, but even with my CPU speed (or lack of) and ethernet overhead, I should be getting at least 1 Mb per second, right?

Be careful what units you're talking with Usually the connection speeds are told in bits per second (like Mbps, Mbit/s, Mb/s, etc), but actual transfer speeds in bytes per second (like MB/s, MiB/s, Mbytes/s, etc)... 8 times difference.

1 MB (megabyte) per second is close to max with 10 Mb (megabit) per second connection, and that's with the fastest setups. Transfers are mainly done with CPU and on 68k Amigas you can't expect anywhere near the max unless you have 060 accelerator. But still you should indeed get more than 5k anything. Couple hundreds of kilobytes per second should be expected.

[markpaterson]

I can live with a few hundred k per second.

For AmiTCP i followed this guide to the letter http://www.wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de/~an...itcp/index.htm

For the other stacks, I used their install wizards.

btw - I specifically wrote Mb not MB.

[markpaterson]

What's the correct way to run CardPatch? I just put it in Startup-Sequence, as C:CardPatch. Does it need more than that? I put it near the top, a few lines below set patch, but i also tried it lower down, and in user startup but it didn't seem to make a difference. I just wanted it high up enough for it to do it's thing way before the Stack gets run in User Startup.

[rockape]

Hi markpaterson,

The beginning of my Startup-Sequence for my A1200.

Quote

"; $VER: Startup-Sequence_HardDrive 45.1 (25.11.00)
; Startup-Sequence for hard drive systems
run >NIL: C:CardReset TICKS 50
If Exists C:IDEFix
C:IDEFix
EndIf

C:SetPatch QUIET"


Note

"run >NIL: C:CardReset TICKS 50" is the first active line.

Also

Confirm you have the following

"CardPatch" and "cardreset" in "C".

"3c589.device" in Workbench,Devs/Networks

"pccard.library" in Workbench:Libs


I hope this helps.

Regards, Michael

aka rockape

[markpaterson]

Ok, I see the extra options on CardReset, I'll be sure to add that. Thanks!

Where do you run CardPatch? Is that somewhere in the startup-sequence too? And does it need more than just c:CardPatch?

I was under the impression that they both try and do the same kind of thing so only one is needed. Now I'm not quite sure. So I need to use both?

I definitely have 3c589.device and pccard.library installed.

[rockape]

Hi Mark,

I was going to update you in here, but by chance you dropped into Amiga.Org chat and we (hopefully) sorted some of you're trubs out.

Regards, Michael

aka rockape

[markpaterson]

Ok, I think i'm ok now…

On a whim, I installed IBrowse to see how internet speed compared to LAN. I downloaded a 1MB file from Aminet in 5 seconds. Wow! That gave me some hope!

So I was thinking maybe it was just my LAN connection that had issues. I reinstalled AmiTCP, and decided to download a different FTP client: AmiTradeCenter.

It transfered a 1MB file from my Mac to my Amiga's Ram disk in about 4 seconds, with a CPS of around 300. OK thats more like it!

Went back and compared to the Directory Opus 5 FTP client, and the exact same file took 3 minutes!! Pretty stark difference!

And now, AmiFTP seems fairly fast when downloading single files, like lha archives, but still goes back to 5kbps when you try to download a directory of random files. Weird, because AmiTradeCenter handles downloading directories just fine.

I also installed the CardPatch / CardReset tools for good measure, although I tested the speed without them and it wasn't affected either way. Although with them installed I don't suffer from flakey PCMCIA issues like random disconnects, so still worth being there.

SO I guess maybe I was just hit by some lousy FTP clients the first time around? Weird because I'm sure I'll get replies saying how DOpus and AmiFTP is just fine for them!

[markpaterson]

Thanks for all your help. Special shout out to rockape for going the extra mile on the IRC chat!

[idrougge]

Might be something to do with passive mode.

[crazyc]

watching the thread with interest as I hadnt had those issues but then again I already use Amitradecenter, which is probably why...