Should constant pings slow down file transfers

[Fraoch]

Hello:

I'm monitoring my FreeNAS server using Cacti in my workstation. One of the tests Cacti does is ping the server. It just about constantly pings it.

I was noticing that my file transfers were rather jerky. They proceeded at high speed, then paused, then proceeded further, then paused, etc.

Could this have been caused by the pings? I wouldn't think a simple ping would pause a transfer completely. It could also be how my file manager reports file transfer speeds - perhaps I should do proper testing using dd or iozone, but my dd tests were very fast with no pauses. Also my network switch is showing the pauses are actually happening.

I'll retest with the ping disabled.

 

[cyberjock]

Depends on what you are doing with the ping. 1 ping per second, if using the standard packet size, would be like 200 bytes tops. If you are telling it to do 50MB per ping and to do it every half second, then it would definitely be a problem.

There's not enough information to narrow down your problem.

The issue could also be your desktop can't send the data fast enough. You also could have a misconfigured network. This doesn't necessarily have to be a server-side problem.

 

[Fraoch]

Thanks for your reply.

Depends on what you are doing with the ping. 1 ping per second, if using the standard packet size, would be like 200 bytes tops. If you are telling it to do 50MB per ping and to do it every half second, then it would definitely be a problem.

There's not enough information to narrow down your problem.

Yes unfortunately I couldn't find details of how Cacti pings. I might if I dug a little deeper, but all that seemed to be there in the settings was how long to wait before timing out, and how many retries after a time out.

The issue could also be your desktop can't send the data fast enough. You also could have a misconfigured network. This doesn't necessarily have to be a server-side problem.

Could certainly be the case but I do have fairly good equipment - an enterprise managed switch (Netgear GS108T v2) and a good Intel network interface (Intel i218V off an Intel Z97 chipset). I do have an Intel PRO/1000 CT lying around doing nothing but I wasn't sure if it was better or worse than the i218V. The PRO/1000 CT does offloading for sure and it looks like the i218V does as well:

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...s/ethernet-connection-i218-gbe-datasheet.html

Perhaps I could also try with the PRO/1000 CT.

 

[cyberjock]

I know the 1000 CT is a very good "go to" card for users looking for Intel cards to put in their server. I'd expect the i218V to work (it didn't in 2013), but the CT would definitely rule out your NIC as a possible problem.