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I currently have a data center connected to two remote locations via MPLS - 2M and 6M respectively. The 2M connection (to Asia from the US) has about 300ms of latency and when transferring between clients (XP, 2003 Server) and server (2003 Server) a single flow won't exceed .65 Mbps.

I can get a very nice connection via FTP that fills up pretty much the entire 2 Mbps with a single threaded FTP connection but CIFS or whatever else TCP based seems to be gimped horribly.

It's been suggested that this is a TCP window size issue but when referring to this to change the window size to 64K (or larger, I've tried a range of window sizes) it doesn't change my transfer speed at all. I've peeked at Network Monitor to see what window sizes I'm negotiating and it's reporting that if I set it to 64K it's really negotiating 64K and so on.

I don't really have much experience with any of this insanity so was hoping someone might have some insight into what I'm missing or some things to consider.

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  • What kind of vendor QOS is implemented on your MPLS links?
    – Izzy
    Sep 1, 2009 at 21:34
  • No specific QoS is implemented (like we have no voice / video / etc on the link). Our provider says that from on-site router to on-site router there's absolutely nothing to cause this on their end.
    – Dustin
    Sep 1, 2009 at 23:41

2 Answers 2

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We have the same problem as you do, the only way to solve the problem of accessing CIFS via the MPLS link is to speed it up with CIFS accelerator like Riverbed devices or F5 Networks devices. It will be worst if you are using windows file sharing, and without a local domain controller due to the chatty protocol from MS. With exception of Vista and above due to SMBv2.

We get around 250ms to US DC from APAC and 220ms to our European DC.

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IMHO, low level hacks like changing the window size aren't the first place to start. 300ms latency is horrible. Have you looked at packet loss? FTP has less overhead than Windows file copying so it's generally going to run faster.

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    300ms latency from Asia to US may be reasonable. Sep 1, 2009 at 21:08
  • @Igal, especially if it's to somewhere like Thailand Sep 1, 2009 at 21:30
  • 300ms latency from Asia may be resonable to expect but it's horrible from a performance standpoint.
    – joeqwerty
    Sep 1, 2009 at 21:41
  • I'm with you on the horror of 300ms, but it's within the SLA for US to our location in Asia and is significantly better than like a site-to-site VPN over the internet on average. I've done Iperf tests from site to site and there isn't any notable packet loss at all.
    – Dustin
    Sep 1, 2009 at 23:43

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