[pptp-server] Performance difference between TCPIP and SMB traffic

[Joe Ward]

okay so I asked my NT engineer friend to enlighten me on this subject.  We 
talked about this long ago, well before I even started using vpn tunnels 
and the like. below is the blurb from that conversation.

--------------
The issue is with latency.
SMB is a poor WAN protocol. It takes about 53 packets to just rename a
file. This is 1 packet, ack, 1 packet, ack, etc. The reason is directory
traversal. Each step into a directory requires a full security check. So,
instead of a single "Hey, rename this file" packet, you have a packet for
each step into the filesystem.
So, fine in a LAN, sucks in a WAN.

-------------------------------

this explains a lot with my case in particular.  I get a huge number of out 
of order packets,  thing are better now that I upgraded to the latest 
pptpd, but it still drops packets cause the buffer isn't that big (unless 
someone can explain how to up that figure)  I've also wanted to go back and 
look at the mtu settings and such from the options file thread.  but I have 
not had the opportunity to do so. in hopes of tweaking everything the best 
I can.

also explains alot based on the past arguments of wrapping, encoding, 
unwrapping etc.   true you have to do this for ftp, but you dont' transfer 
as many packets with ftp as you do with SMB.

-Joe Ward

At 4/3/2001 03:52 PM, Scott Johnston wrote:
>I see a similar and significant difference between ftp and smb on
>internal networks as well as over the pptp link.  I always thought it
>was caused by windows being less than efficient in the way it copied
>files.
>
>Scott
>
>Tife Chan wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I found that passing SMB traffic through the pptp link is much slower 
> than TCPIP.
> > I have network A and network B and they are connected together with two 
> linux servers using pptp.
> > When ftp a file from network A to network B, the speed is fine.
> > But when I try to copy the same file from network A to network B 
> through Windows Explorer,
> > the speed is much much slower.
> >
> > Any idea?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tife Chan
> >
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