It was my problem.

My network interface was in 100Mbps half-duplex instead of
100Mbps full-duplex (the switch was in 100 full).

I was using DHCP to configure the interface and for some
reason it came up as half (even though a 4.3-BETA box elsewhere
around here comes up in full-duplex).

It seems that Cisco equipment doesn't autonegotiate well as we
have seen this problem on other UNIX systems (HP-UX in particular)
so we try to tie everything down these days.

I have now tied down the interface at my end with this in /etc/rc.conf:

ifconfig_xl0="inet 10.1.2.3 netmask 0xffffff00 media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex"

I no longer have problems with NIS client performance.

i.e. when doing my huge FTP tests I can open xterms and they now
start immediately.

Sorry for the false alarm.


P.S. I would still like to try using DHCP but *NOT* autonegotiating.

Is this possible ?

Should the below work ?

ifconfig_xl0="DHCP media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex"


--- Excerpt of my complaint earlier re: NIS client caching issues ---

I can see this poor performance in just trying to start an xterm
under network load and can create 24 -> 32 second delays with a
test as follows:

% cd /usr/ports/distfiles/xc
% ftp nis-server    (my home there is local to that box)
ftp> prompt
ftp> mput *.tgz

Just after pressing enter on the above line, start two xterms.

Now thats quite a bit of data even when myself and the server
are on 100Mbit/s full-duplex switched ethernet links.

-rw-r-----   1 user     group         237098 Oct  3 17:55 X336contrib.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        17388037 Oct  3 17:55 X336src-1.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        14834083 Oct  3 17:55 X336src-2.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        21994230 Oct  3 17:55 X401src-1.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        18971060 Oct  3 17:55 X401src-2.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        23880758 Oct  3 17:56 X402src-1.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        18918369 Oct  3 17:56 X402src-2.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        24990773 Oct  3 17:56 X410src-1.tgz
-rw-r-----   1 user     group        22496001 Oct  3 17:56 X410src-2.tgz

The transfers go well with the larger files achieving between
5.14 and 7.78 MB/s however the xterms dont appear until after the
whole FTP mput is finished.

i.e. the timing was:

T+0    I press enter on the "mput *.tgz" FTP command
T+3s   I launch xterm 1 from another xterm
T+5s   I launch xterm 2 from another xterm
T+25s  FTP mput completes
T+27s  xterm 1 appears on my display
T+37s  xterm 2 appears on my display

Now xterm 1 has the message "yp_first: clnt_call: RPC: Timed out"
as its first line and xterm 2 has two of these messages.


So I'd like to do a little bit of investigation and was wonderring
if other people have some insight as to where to look.

This is not a short term problem and has been present across many
months of -CURRENT (last build 19th September 2001 and typically built
monthly) ever since I became a NIS client about 18 to 24 months ago.


Further info:

The nis-server runs HP-UX 10.20.

The network is expensive Cisco switched ethernet with everything tied
down to 100 MBit full-duplex at all ends except my FreeBSD box which
is autonegotiating its "3Com 3c905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL" card simply
because I have the line ifconfig_xl0="DHCP" in my /etc/rc.conf and I
dont know how to set media options with ifconfig when DHCPing (anyone
??).


--
 Matthew Thyer                                 Phone:  +61 8 8259 7249
 Science Corporate Information Systems         Fax:    +61 8 8259 5537
 Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Edinburgh
 PO Box 1500 EDINBURGH South Australia 5111

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