Slow file sharing performance - summary

I installed a CIPE VPN, between my notebook computer and firewall.  The 
notebook computer accessed my home network, via a dial up ISP and VPN. 
My home network was connected to a cable modem.  The VPN worked well, 
except for Samba and NFS file sharing from my home network to the 
notebook.  File sharing in the opposite direction worked as well as can 
be expected.  Other protocols, such as FTP, telnet, SSH etc., also 
worked well in both directions.  My initial suspicions were that the 
problem was due to the lack of flow control with UDP packets, which are 
used by NFS and to a limited extent by Samba.  Since this problem also 
occurred when attempting to access an OS/2 system, I suspected that the 
problem was due more to the protocol, than the Samba server.  I posted 
this problem to Samba, NFS and Linux newsgroups and mail lists, but 
didn't get any response.  Although I wasn't convinced it was a CIPE 
problem, I posted it in this mail list, in case someone else had 
experienced a similar situation.  There were many responses, some 
useful, some not.  I was however, given many possibilities to try, most 
of which had no effect on the problem.  I also tried connecting via 
wireless and directly to the firewall.  These connections entered my 
firewall in exactly the same manner as when I was using dial up, the 
main obvious difference being speed, up to 100 Mb, vs less than 50K via 
dial up.  When I used higher speed connections, the file sharing worked 
as it should, which caused me to further suspect UDP flow control 
problems.  This also ruled out the possibility of firewall rules causing 
the problem.  Then some members here mentioned the "interfaces" option 
for Samba, which specify the connections to be supported.  Using this 
option corrected the problem for Samba file access. The Samba man page 
discusses this option and mentions that Samba defaults to using all 
broadcast capable interfaces.  As I recall, ppp interfaces, such as CIPE 
and the dialer, are not broadcast capable.  This was not a factor in the 
past, when I've worked with file sharing over dial up in OS/2 and 
Windows.  And while the interfaces option cleared the problem for dial 
up, it doesn't explain why I didn't have problems at the higher speeds. 
  I would have thought that the broadcast issue would have been the same 
in all cases.  This is a situation that should be investigated by 
someone who's more familiar with Samba than I am.

NFS still does not work over dial up.


Thanks again for your help.

jk



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