Date: 01-18-91 (09:59) Number: 3247 of 3248 To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: PHIL GORDEMER Read: (N/A) Subj: TUNING YOUR NETWORK Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Conf: LANTASTI (5) Read Type: GENERAL This small note is to help answer some questions that constantly get asked on the best settings for use with Lantastic 3.02. Please note I DO NOT work for Artisoft, but do a lot of installations and spend a significant amount of time handling Network Tech Support. Many people have problems getting good performance when running NOS 3.02. Let me clarify here what is happening. In the previous releases, 2.57, system response was very good on small systems (4 stations or less, which is what many PCBoard systems are) but speed degradation was significant as you added more stations, to the point that when you got to about 8-10 performance was totally unacceptable. When 3.02 was developed, the underlying strategy was to allow it constant upgrade paths and consistant throughput as the system got bigger. This is done by the added control given through TASKS and Network buffers sizes. Correct use of the 2 parameters allows Lantastic to operate faster over a variety of system sizes and loads, BUT because of the flexibility build into the commands, incorrect settings can severly reduce performance on small systems. In the old 2.57 version, the network tasks and buffers did not work correctly so not much was being changed. Below is some recommended rules of thumb to use to get the best performance from Lantastic with the least amount of work. These are general statments and some refining might have to be done on each system. --------------------------------------------------------------------- NETWORK COMMANDS in AUTOEXEC.BAT General Notes here, Share should be loaded before REDIR. On 386 machines, DO NOT LOAD SHARE HIGH. Major performance degradation is seen when many files have to be open. Size and buffer on the REDIR command line are important. You might want to experiment with the size a bit. 2048-4096 seem to work best. ae2 irq=?? ailanbios share redir size=3072 buffers=3 --------------------------------------------------------------------- NET_MGR Set tasks to (# of nodes / 3) + 1. DO NOT MAKE THIS # to high, this is the best way to kill system performance. If in doubt, lower it Network Buffer - 12K - 16K. Again, more is not necessarily better. Bare minimum is 8K --------------------------------------------------------------------- DISK CACHE Lancache provided should only be used if the server is NOT a station. This is because it supports delayed writes and that will destroy uploads/ downloads on that machine. When using Lancache, EXTended memory is perferred. Please note that Lancache does NOT cache the directory structure. Super PC-Kwik is the all around best. Use EXPanded memory with the following setting. superpck /a+ /q+ /h- /d- (h- and d- ARE MANDATORY) VCACHE 5.0 also works well. Be sure to disable timed writes. cache-em /t=0 --------------------------------------------------------------------- DEDICATED SERVER If you have a machine that is a dedicated server (IE, you do not run anything on it), then you can give a MAJOR performance boost by reducing the server time splice to the local application. (EXample: On my server I run a local copy of PCBoard, but only to start the event. Since it just sits there and ITS performance doesn't matter, I reduce priority to it and give it to the network) AILANBIOS RUN_BURST=10 --------------------------------------------------------------------- These are just recommended places to start. There are MANY things that effect network performance and no 2 systems are the same. Good Luck