To make it clear, there are two distinct things, and one of them is not really an "issue", but rather a side-effect of a dated TCP/IP stack.

- Extremely slow and varying speeds, be it LAN or WAN: this is an issue with the driver somehow, that noone in the team can reproduce, so it's likely to happen only in particular networks with "non-friendly" switches, and it might be some negociation issue.

- Good LAN speed (let's say 4-10MB/s for local FTP/SMBFS, whatever), but about 350-400kB/s from WAN: this can actually increase if the website is close to the client, and it has to do with the TCP window scaling feature, that is not implemented in MorphOS TCP/IP stack (and before you ask, it's not in AROS nor OS4 either :)). Without this feature, the speed is actually quite dependant from the roundtrip time between the server and the client, which explains why it's faster if the server is close.
That said, increasing send/receive window (static) buffers can help a bit (you do that in envarc:sys/net/netstack.config), and here, by setting them from the default value (8k) to 60000, it allows me to reach 850kB/s, which is the max i can get from my ISP anyway (Linux on my PC gets something like 900kB/s).

For this second case, i believe using a local (or close) proxy might be a good workaround. Didn't try, though.

[ Edited by Fab 22.11.2012 - 10:01 ]

Hi Fab

A bit off topic topic maybe, but the issue with stalled loading in OWB still exists (OWB loads for example 95% of a page and waits from few seconds to several minutes before continuing). Happens on any site (even very simple ones) any time so its a bit hard to pinpoint the actual cause of problem.

With my earlier ISP I had no problems getting full 10Mbps speeds from many places couple of years ago, even with default values in netstack.config. But with the current new ISP I seem to be stuck there around 800-900kB/s in the best cases with 10Mbps line even with proxy. If it's because of ISP, general internet evolution, my gear or what.. I don't know :) Fab has an explanation, but I'd still be interested to see if my earlier ISP would work still as fast as few years ago or would it have become slower from the changes in internet generally :) Anyway it seems like my speeds are somehow more limited now too... Although my ISP's speed test program gives me full download speeds and little worse upload speeds.. it's flash based player which works with OWB's flashplugin :)

@Hooligan

It's safe to say it hasn't anything to do with OWB itself, but the underlying connection stalling, rather.

@jpv

Well, 900kB/s isn't that far from the max of your internet connection, anyway... The theorical max would be 1.25MB/s, and with some ISP, it can easily vary in the down direction... ;)

Oooh.. I've made these earlier tests with default buffers and now tried with that 60000. Now were talking again ;) OWB shows 1.3MB/s from the same sites I got that under 900kB/s with default values =)

Fab wrote:,
Quote:

Fab's quote above about none of the MorphOS Dev. Team members being able to reproduce the problem with LAN, or WAN download speeds that vary wildly and result in very poor download speeds is very confusing to me, as there have been so many users who have reported the problem, it does not appear to me to be that rare. Since none of the Team members can reproduce this problem, there is no way for them to fix it.

Thanks Fab for an answer I can try to work with. I have no problem admitting that networking is very confusing to me and always has been. That is why network administrators get paid the "Big Bucks" I guess.

Given the fact that none of the Team members is experiencing, or can reproduce my problem which causes download speeds to vary wildly and drop to ridiculously slow speeds, or even stall, I think the only recourse for me is to purchase a newer, or different Wireless Router to connect to my Cable Modem, in hopes that I can find one that works better with the MorphOS3.1 SunGEM Ethernet port, while I am using my TP-Link TL-MR3040 Wireless N + 3G device (I don't know what to name it, a Bridge, or portable self powered wireless modem, or something else). The TP-Link is usually what I use to provide an Internet connection to my G4 PowerBook and sometimes other MorphOS3.1 computers, while running MorphOS3.1.

If anyone can provide recommendations on new or used wireless routers that are known to work well with MorphOS3.1, I would appreciate members listing their routers that work without any problems here in this thread, so I might get a WLAN that works well with MorphOS3.1, my G4 PowerBook and my TP-Link TL-MR3040 wireless "thing".

My current wireless router is an older NetGear which only provides wireless "g" speeds, not wireless "n", so I should get a speed boost when using wireless networking if I get a newer wireless "n" router, but that may not matter while running MorphOS3.1.

Fab's instructions regarding changing the buffer size (not Stack size and I wrote in error earlier) to get faster overall download, or file transfer speeds, is not clear for noobs like me, but I think he wrote out how to change the buffer size more clearly in an earlier post in another thread, so I am going to look for that, and/or figure out how to change the buffer size and if someone does not beat me to it, I will write simple instructions in this thread on how to change the buffer size, just in case there are any more members/users here that missed Fab's earlier post, and they would like to try this potential fix, which might increase their max download and/or file transfer speeds.

I would like this thread to be used for placing simple instructions and recommendations on how to deal with the two different networking problems. We had an earlier thread where users started to list their equipment in hopes that the Dev. Team could identify what was causing the possible negotiation problem with the driver, which causes the download speeds to vary wildly and sometimes even stall, but the thread died out without any actions being taken, or any recommendations being made from the Team. It does not appear that having all the users that are experiencing the problem with wildly varying download speeds, to list their modems, routers, switches, or other networking equipment, will help the Dev. Team to solve this problem, so hopefully we can help by listing the networking modems, routers, switches and other equipment that has been proven to work CORRECTLY.

If anyone has a better idea, I am open to all suggestions. I just want some faster and more consistent download speeds, while I am using MorphOS3.1.

I hope we can keep this thread going long enough to do some good for a few users (specially myself).

I would really like to see this fixed right now its the only thing thats keeping me from buying MorphOS license, im sitting on a 100/10 mbit line.

nemesiswar,
Quote:

What kind of problem are you experiencing and are you connecting with a wired, or wireless networking connection?

What download/file transfer speeds are you seeing, and what sort of speeds do you expect to see, that would be acceptable enough for you to consider purchasing a MorphOS3.1 registration license?

The problems im experiencing is that the internet browsing is really slow takes about 15 seconds or more to load a web page (like for example Facebook), i havent really looked at the downloads speed i know it took more than 30 minutes to download the ultimate pack (about 60% finished after 30 min). An acceptable speed would be atleast 10/10 mbit/s, ofcourse in the best of worlds i would be able to utilize all of my speed.
Iam using a wire to all my stationary computers.
Besides the network issue i find MorpOS amazing.

[ Edited by nemesiswar 23.11.2012 - 20:51 ]

> i know it took more than 30 minutes to download the ultimate pack
> (about 60% finished after 30 min).

This would be about 200 kB/s. Definitely slower than it should be.

> An acceptable speed would be atleast 10/10 mbit/s

As has been discussed in this thread, 1250 kB/s is beyond what the MorphOS TCP/IP stack can achieve for Internet downloads.

> If anyone can provide recommendations on new or used wireless routers that
> are known to work well with MorphOS3.1, I would appreciate members listing
> their routers that work without any problems here in this thread

My TP-LINK TL-WR841ND works flawlessly (within the restrictions imposed by the dated TCP/IP stack) with MorphOS on my Mac mini, which is connected by wire to the router. 32 Mbps cable Internet here.

Quote:

AROS: I have no clue about networking stuff, but looking at sources in bsdsocket/netinet/* there is quite some code in there which seems to deal with window scaling.

@Georg

There seems to be such code indeed, and i guess Sonic probably added them at some point, as AROS TCP is originally based on AmiTCP3, which definitely didn't have this.

Some log (from 2006) on unmorphos.cvs.sourceforge.net says
"TCP and UDP code upgraded to FreeBSD v2.0.5"

> Some log (from 2006) on unmorphos.cvs.sourceforge.net says
> "TCP and UDP code upgraded to FreeBSD v2.0.5"

I can see that this particular commit is from May 28th that year. This would thus also include MOSNet 1.1 and MOSNet 1.2.

Does AROS have the same problem with slow internet connections?

> there are two distinct things, and one of them is [...] a side-effect of a dated TCP/IP
> stack. [...] about 350-400kB/s from WAN: [...] it has to do with the TCP window
> scaling feature, that is not implemented in MorphOS TCP/IP stack [...]. Without
> this feature, the speed is actually quite dependant from the roundtrip time between
> the server and the client, which explains why it's faster if the server is close.

Will the updated NetStack that is based on newer FreeBSD code and is supposed to ship with MorphOS 3.2 remedy or mitigate this issue?

Yes, the new stack supports window scaling and it definitely improves the speed / stability of the connection (in some cases dramatically so).

There might still be scope for improvements to the sungem device, but that's not my field

> Yes, the new stack supports window scaling and it definitely improves
> the speed / stability of the connection (in some cases dramatically so).

Fantastic news. Thanks :-)

Nadir,
Quote:

Will there also be support for fragmented packets?

You mean datagram fragmentation? Even the old stack should do that. One issue that is still outstanding relates to SACK (selective acknowldgement of received packets). This is a TCP level feature which is very useful when packets arrive in the wrong order.

I'm not sure if this will be included in the 3.2 release. I currently work on two different FreeBSD trees: 2.2 (with some patches from latest repository) and 4.11 (+patches). It might be that only the former will be ready for the next MorphOS release and it does not have the SACK feature.

There are big changes in the 4.x tree and it will take some more time to make sure everything works so 4.x (or an even later release) might have to wait unfortunately. Good news is that compared to the old stack, you will see a large improvement anyhow. Even a FreeBSD 2.2 based stack is newer than anything else on our systems.

/Nicholai

Experiencing same TCP problems as everyone else using OWB on a Powerbook.
Seems like a LOT of packet loss.
Causing web pages to take a long time to finish.
Downloads are all over the board, usually dropping to 20kbs from 200kbs for no reason.

Since the upgrade to 3.1, all issues with OWB 1.18 have vanished! The net is fast and friendy! Ty FAB

Nadir,
Quote:

I bow to you, Sir!