Hello Guys,
We just got a G5 running Mac OS 10.3 in our company. The problem is that when we try to move a file from a Windows 2000 server to the new G5, the transfer speed is way to slow (350Kb/sec). We have several Macs running OS 9.x and they work just great accessing the Windows server, the speed is just like using a windows machine. The G5 is taking about 30 minutes to transfer a 100mb file.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
J.H
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I suspect you are using Appletalk to access the server (probably
using Window's Services for Macintosh). OS X prefers to use TCP/IP
filesharing protocols: SMB, AFP, NFS, or even FTP.
OS X is Unix-based. You could also consider installing the free
Windows Services for Unix - it is much more robust than Microsoft's
Services for Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/w
Also you need to keep in mind that the way OSX and OS9 handle AFP is greatly different. Resource forks are the major issue, and in our environment we've done the neccessary testing and found that AFP + OSX sucks. We are currently using netatalk on linux to serve our legacy OS9 machines, but this only until they can be migrated to OS X at which point we'll be using an entire CIFS/SMB network.
You will encounter problems when using OS 9 and OS X accessing the same data over AFP. (This occurs on netatalk, and I assume the same in Mac Services for Windows). Since all the appletalk server software on non Mac platforms were written for OS9, their support for OS X isn't "at best". We encountered problems when using Microsoft Word with files on AFP. This is out of the scope of the answer, but in short avoid AFP on OSX as much as you can. :)
I can't say *why* it's slower, but try SMB/CIFS. If the files are stored on a Windows 2000 server, you can share out the same data via AFP *and* SMB. This way the OS9 machines can use their data via AFP and the OS X machines via SMB. Just make sure all the OS9 users use file extensions.
HTH
Ryan.
This is what's happening now...
I tried using SMB to access the files, but the speed remains the same. Now, when I try to access any other windows machine in the network, the speed is really fast. I think the problem is the network card in the Windows 2000 machine, for some reason, the network card an OS X don't like each other. I'll get a new network card and test it out.
I also want to thank everyone here for your feedback. Your expertise is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
J.H
I would like to expand on this question and add that I am seeing the same problem both with mac clients connecting to my internal W2K3 servers as well as to the internet.
I agree with the solutions provided above vis a vis the Windows shares but I don't see that as being the problem in my current site.
The site is a mixed PC and Mac shop - we recently introduced a new W2K3 server and have been rolling out Mac G5's with the latest OS and patches - all the macs perform very poorly on the network and getting to the internet. We have set explicit DNS refs, verified all other IP settings and nothing seems to resolve.
Any suggestions?
I've a very similar problem. But in my case the slow machine is not a g5 it's a g4 (Mirrored Drive Doors).
The installed mac os x version is 10.2.x. I also try to connect to a windows 2003 server via appletalk (TCP/IP).
I've tested the lan speed form serveral machines with the helios lantest.
Everything works fine (also on other mac os x machines) except the g4.
The strange thing is that only the reading speed is very slow the writing speed is normal!!!
So, did anyone of you make the same experience?
Just thought I'd post a comment because I was having some same problems on our network here and it ended up being that the mac was not detecting 100TX full duplex. To fix it you simply go into the system prefs click on network then select your ethernet adapter and click configure. then click on the Ethernet button and configure manually select 100baseTX for your speed and full-duplex under duplex and hit apply. My transfer rate flying now.
-z
Has anyone found a solution to this. We have g5's with 10.3.8 using SMB to Win2k3 server Proliant ML370 G3 on a gigabit network. Download speeds are 5 to 6 times slower than upload speeds. We can duplicate the problem on a W2K server as well. However, upload and download speeds are the same on a PIII Windows XP sp2 desktop.
Tried DAVE, no improvement
Found a reference to samba settings -- normally it's the server, but possible that you can tweak for the Mac client as well:
socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY
Normally "socket options" line has buffer sizes specified, may have other options. Apparently nuking the buffer sizes and setting those two options help a lot -- at least for SMB server. Not sure if that'll help if you adjust your SMB.conf on the OSX client, but thought I'd throw it out there...
I worked several hours on the same problem as dfoster2.
In my situation it had nothing to do with software (OSX 10.2; 10.3; 10.4 and Server Win2000; Win2003)
The problem was the MAC (OSX 10.4 SMB) connected to 100TX and the server (Win Server 2003sp1) connected to 1000TX.
By connecting the servers network adapter to 100TX (on the same switch) the up- and download speed of the MAC is OK.
I hope this information will save somebody a lot of time.
R.S.
I had this problem after migrating to Server 2003 Std. 5 months ago. All my G5s were sooooo slow to upload. My Creatives hated me. Subsequently, I upgraded all my patch boards to 10/100 switches. The download/upload ratio performance is much better now: ~<8mb-sec/~<2mb-sec...down
Jucky
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: weedPosted on 2004-07-01 at 14:11:05ID: 11451723
Have you updated to 10.3.4?