Subject: Ftp stop and go problems

From: "Durham, Kenneth J" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 06:53:04 -0700

I have recently been getting complaints from clients that use my ftp system.
They are noting to me that the ftp will upload great but then have frequent
stops.  They had to stop there download, disconnect and then continue agian.
I thought maybe the server was over loaded but thats not the case.  Any
thing you guys can think of?

---

From: Gregory A Lundberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 13:31:01 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 10 May 1999, Durham, Kenneth J wrote:

> I have recently been getting complaints from clients that use my ftp
> system. They are noting to me that the ftp will upload great but then
> have frequent stops.  They had to stop there download, disconnect and
> then continue agian. I thought maybe the server was over loaded but
> thats not the case.  Any thing you guys can think of?

Sounds like a dialup problem.

I'd take a look at MTU, idle timeouts, retry intervals and such.  If the
client is a Windows 95 box, I'd check to see if it has the kernel IP
patches available from www.microsoft.com .. I'd also take a look at which
client software packages are having problems.

If the clients are connected via dialup to a remote server and the traffic
is going through routers it's probable that the stoppage is normal network
delays and failures.  I'd expect problems downloading at the same time,
though, so this may not be the problem.

On the server side: The server itself simply pumps the data into the
socket as fast as the kernel will allow.  So it's possible there are bugs
in the kernel (look for vendor patches), configuration problems (say, NFS
or something) or hardware failures (look for bad Ethernet cards, wires and
hubs).  Basically, though, if it's only uploads (and the clients are doing
downloads as well), I'd say it's not the server.

-- 

Gregory A Lundberg              Senior Partner, VRnet Company
1441 Elmdale Drive              [email-masked]
Kettering, OH 45409-1615 USA    1-800-809-2195