On Thursday 19 October 2006 18:42, you wrote:
BTW, this phrase "the line was dropping to 500Kbs up/down" implies that there was some protocol synching taking place that negotiated the speed at that level (like a dsl line). It would be more accurate to type "my observed throughput was only 500Kbs up/down."
Well yes... that's what I meant.
So, now I don't get your set-up... when you typed "I had to lock-down the network card to 10mbit full-duplex" and then the bit above about the MCI technician and the 4Mbit circuit etc. then this sounds like you have a box running openser that is directly plugged into a metro-lan-style connection that is hardcoded at the provider end to 10/full.
In a datacenter I have a rack, with a 24 channel patch-panel that takes 24 cables to the meetme room, where the E1s are patched through to the service providers. 1 of these is patched through to MCI, and 1 to Interoute for the ethernet connections. MCI provide a 4Mbit burst/10, and Interoute a 10Mbit burstable to 25Mbit (delivered on ethernet). In the cabinet each of these go into their own Linux firewall, each with 3 nics. Behind these firewall are the openser servers, mediaproxy servers, and Cisco AS5400/5350 and Lucent max tnt pstn gateways.
The firewall connected to Interoute autonegotiates its connection just fine. The openser server behind the MCI firewall seemed extremely sluggish, and during tests we couldn't get a reliable throughput. It seemed as if the openser was slowing-down, but in fact it was because the nic of the firewall was in half duplex. After using ethtool to lock it to 10Mbit/full, everything worked fine. I just thought I'd mention that in case it helped anyone having a similar problem..
And yet, when you type "datacenter patch-panel" this implies that there is a local area network
No, just a patch-panel with 24 sockets in the front, and 24 cables going to the meetme room, not a switch.
when I consider "old 10Mbit equipment" together with the phrase "datacenter" my jaw hits the ground...
The datacenter doesn't do any switching/routing, they just provide point-to-point connections between the rack of the provider, and the rack of the user. I don't see anything wrong with a service provider using older 10Mbit equipment to provide a 4Mbit line really...
Where is your server?
interxion.com , Brussels.
Hope that cleared up the confusion :o)
Richard