Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Just ran a couple of tests comparing my PC and my SAM460 on scanmyspeed.com.

The PC goes up to 6.2Mbps Download and 1.4Mbps Upload which is what I pay for to my provider (I know it sucks...)

The SAM460 only gets me a 1.8Mpbs download and a 0.7Mbps Upload.

Question: is that due to OWB, the ethernet driver or the motherboard?

Did you try several times after each other on each machine? I get wildly varying results when trying twice in a row.

I wouldn't necessarily put great faith in the results from that page.

Best regards,

Niels

It mostly gives similar results all the time. Sadly there is not a lot of speed testers that don't require Java or Javascript.

I can also notice it while browsing the web, it takes twice or more the time to load the page than on my PC.

Delta wrote:I can also notice it while browsing the web, it takes twice or more the time to load the page than on my PC.

That is probably more down to the program (OWB) than the network and network driver. I often see it being slow to load especially the last part of some page elements, as if it makes pauses in the download.

It may help some to increase the number of active connections (Settings->Network). I have 12, IIRC the default is 8? But don't increase it too much, or it will start to deteriorate again (probably choking on the administration of the connection threads).

Best regards,

Niels

It may also be the case that the Amiga's network stack is getting a bit old, and is unable to perform network transfer using DMA. When Olaf has discussed this on AW.net/etc, I believe he has said it would require a major rewrite, and that one might as well just port a more modern network stack in that case.

ChrisH wrote:It may also be the case that the Amiga's network stack is getting a bit old, and is unable to perform network transfer using DMA...

Most ethernet drivers only use DMA and the 460's ethernet driver is using DMA right now.

However, if you review the SANA-II standard (see http://wiki.amigaos.net/index.php/SANA-II_Standard) you will find DMA copying was added relatively recently. Not all drivers may support DMA copies to the TCP/IP stack and will defer to using CPU copying instead. I am unsure whether the current TCP/IP stack supports all the facilities in Revision 5 or not.

What is most often wrong is configuration. The default buffers used for sending and receiving are quite small. Instead of focusing on grander things like "DMA" I would focus more on configuration options first.

I'm usging OWB 3.32 for these tests, maybe i'm not "up to date" because I can't find connections settings anywhere? Do you recommend another version?

Delta wrote:I'm usging OWB 3.32 for these tests, maybe i'm not "up to date" because I can't find connections settings anywhere? Do you recommend another version?

MUIOWB.

Best regards,

Niels

Delta wrote:I'm usging OWB 3.32 for these tests, maybe i'm not "up to date" because I can't find connections settings anywhere? Do you recommend another version?

The browser does make a difference in most speed tests. WIth MUI-OWB or Timberwolf I get twice the download speed of RA-OWB (OWB 3.32) at http://testmy.net. Unfortunately, when MUI-OWB fails it's frequently results in a crash whereas RA-OWB usually just gets sluggish or seizes up and I can recover without rebooting. Others may get different results from the AmigaOS browsers but I still use RA-OWB most of the time.

EDIT: I just realized I've been using RA-OWB 3.31. I just tested RA-OWB 3.32 and found the download speed is a little more than half the download speed of RA-OWB 3.31. Here are my average results:
RA-OWB 3.32 = 1.2 Mbps
RA-OWB 3.31 = 2.2 Mbps
MUI-OWB = 4.1 Mbps

For MUI-OWB, with multiple downloads, I got as high as 3MB/s (I gave a 100Mbs connection whis is about 10 MB/s) with the AmigaOne 500.

RoadShow TCP/IP stack is rather slow, I never managed to go further than 4 MB/s (on Sam440, AmigaOne XE G4 or AmigaOne 500)using Samba, MUI-OWB (the fastest with the right options) or PFTP.