Re: [cobalt-users] RaQ4r FTP kills the server - help!

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"James Riordon" <cobalt@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am used to a large file taking time to transfer, but in 20 minutes
> last night on a slightly more successful attempt, the file
> transferred at 2.2MB per minute. That works out to 37.54KB per
> second.

There are lots of reasons data transfer can be slow.  You need to eliminate
some possible causes.

> I know that the connection that we have can handle a lot more
> than that! The colo claims to have multiple OC48's. My old colo I
> know has multiple OC3's. So bandwidth should not be a problem.

That doesn't mean much.  If you have a Ferrari that goes 210 MPH, but you
try to drive it on the beltway in DC during rush hour it's not going to go
more than 5 MPH.  And if the road out of your parking lot is packed, you may
never even get onto the secondary road.  Analogies aside, what a colo claims
may not be the truth and having access to an OC48 doesn't imply anything
about the throughput your individual server has available.  I'll assume your
colo is honest and doesn't have 3 feet of OC48 fiber between the router and
its T1 connection and doesn't mean it has a cage inside a colo facility that
connects to an OC48 somewhere down the line, but there was a time (maybe
still happening) when colos did just that and felt like they were being
honest.  Have you done any benchmarks to see what kind of throughput you can
get from your server - best to try during both peak times and off-peak.
Lots of tools out there.  You can even have some fun with "ab" the Apache
benchmarking tool.  I just sent 100 page requests for www.amigo-3.com and
the average transfer was 23.9 kb/sec.  This is at 11:28 AM EST from Richmond
VA.  From the same server I did the same test for www.google.com and got
196.0 kb/sec.  Without more testing it's not conclusive, but on the surface
it appears that there's a chance your server (actually the network it's on)
is limited to a pretty pathetic transfer rate, either be design or b/c the
colo facility is oversold.  See output below, test yourself.

[root production]# ab -n 100 http://www.amigo-3.com/
This is ApacheBench, Version 1.2
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998 The Apache Group, http://www.apache.org/

Server Software:        Apache/1.3.12
Server Hostname:        www.amigo-3.com
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        6432 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   27.870 seconds
Complete requests:      100
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      666100 bytes
HTML transferred:       643200 bytes
Requests per second:    3.59
Transfer rate:          23.90 kb/s received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min   avg   max
Connect:       84    85   100
Processing:   185   193   192
Total:        269   278   292

[root production]# ab -n 100 http://www.yahoo.com/
This is ApacheBench, Version 1.2
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998 The Apache Group, http://www.apache.org/

Server Software:
Server Hostname:        www.yahoo.com
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        15847 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   8.121 seconds
Complete requests:      100
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      1591400 bytes
HTML transferred:       1584700 bytes
Requests per second:    12.31
Transfer rate:          195.96 kb/s received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min   avg   max
Connect:        6     6     9
Processing:    70    74    91
Total:         76    80   100

> Even the cobalt technicien was not completely sure last night.
>
> So, I am still at a loss. Anyone else can help? I will be calling
> cobalt this morning and see what they say. Any other suggestions from
> users would be appreciated.

I hope that helps some.  If you don't feel like paying $200 an hour to
Cobalt and your colo can't help (or isn't honest) let us know.

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/