Retrospect 6 network performance

[sleifer]

I just upgraded to the release of Retrospect 6 Desktop for Mac. I have two PowerBooks, one acting as the server which is on ethernet and one which is a client that is almost always on airport.

 

If I have the server machine backup itself to a hard drive I get a performance of over 400 MB/min.

 

With the networked PowerBook I'm seeing about 6 MB/min. For most of the time, neither machine is doing anything but the backup.

 

I also see network retries happen, more often when the client Powerbook is being used (even if just to read email)

 

Airport should provide a nominal performance rate near 80 MB/min. even accounting for the fact that nothing is every really nominal, 6 MB/min seems very bad.

 

Under 5.1, the performance was not great but i did sometimes see rates at 20MB/min. -- of course I saw tons of network retries happen

 

 

Please either tell me the trick to get this better, and 'just use wired ethernet' does not count, I know wired is a fatter pipe. the airport pipe should not be so under utilized.

 

This has been an area of bad performance for many versions of retrospect. I hope that it gets some engineering time devoted to it.

[natew]

Hi

 

I've narrowed this issue down to a hardware or network driver problem on my powerbook.

http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=28097

 

The article metions older powerbooks but I think it happens in other cases too.

In my case compares run at normal speed but the backups just crawl. Physically lowering the speed of the network adapter got everything running again just fine.

 

Thanks

Nate

[sleifer]

Seems like a total hack of a solution. Even if I thought it was acceptable to permanently slow down my network, I do not believe this will work in my case as The client machine is currently connected over AirPort and the Apple article states:

 

 

 

Note: You may not be able to configure the available options on some Ethernet network interfaces and network connections. Use the ifconfig command to test a particular option before using it in the script. You cannot set the speed and duplex settings for AirPort Cards.

 

 

 

 

 

This also does not address why this problem it MUCH worse after updating to 6.0

[natew]

Hi,

 

What model powerbook is this? How much RAM? Only as a test - does the client function at a normal speed when connected by ethernet? Again - only a test, not a workaround.

 

I doubt this will help but does disableing all other network ports on the machine make a difference? What kind of processor useage do you get when the backup is running?

 

Thanks

Nate