[Linux-aus] strange LAN congestion problem

[Kevin Maciunas]

I've seen this sort of behavior caused by lack of buffer depth on the 
switch.  As a recycled network person, my first reaction would be to 
dust off wireshark and observe the behavior on the ethernet.

The setup I've played with that exhibited this in spades was a netgear 5 
port switch.  This linked some scientific instrumentation that was 
almost sync'd - and would send a burst of data every 1 second.  The 
chaos that ensued brought the Gbit network to its knees.  I suspect in 
the consumer grade switch side of the kit you're using, the buffering on 
the links is very minimal and this is causing the train wreck upstream.  
(The usual fall back to slow start etc etc...)  Wireshark is probably 
your friend in this case.

My $0.02.
/Kevin

-- 
Kevin J. Maciunas              Net: kevin at cs.adelaide.edu.au
Dept. of Computer Science      Ph : +61 8 8313 5845
University of Adelaide         Fax: +61 8 8313 4366
Adelaide 5005 SOUTH AUSTRALIA  Web: http://www.cs.adelaide.edu.au/~kevin
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