Xref: utzoo comp.sys.mac:39959 comp.protocols.appletalk:2524
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!lanl!beta!laa
From: laa@beta.lanl.gov (Lee A Ankeny)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Increasing RAM on AppleShare Server
Summary: EtherTalk -vs- LocalTalk speed for AppleShar
Keywords: RAM AppleShare
Message-ID: <33912@beta.lanl.gov>
Date: 12 Oct 89 00:23:46 GMT
References: <349@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU> <1989Oct11.022443.25922@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 37



zz1he@sdcc19.ucsd.EDU (Heather Ebey) writes:

>Does anyone know for sure if increasing RAM on a 1MB Plus running >Apple's
AppleShare File Server and Printer Server software will >increase performance?


Scott Truesdell replies:

>Well, yes... it will help a little bit.

... (followed by a discussion of factors affecting AppleShare speed.)



I'd like to share the results of my own crude test of file transfer speed on
LocalTalk versus EtherTalk networks.

I timed the transfer of a 2 megabyte file both to and from AppleShare servers
attached to each network. Both servers were Mac Plusses, though the hard disks
were different. The test was done at night, when network traffic was next to nil
on both networks. Timing was done by stopwatch.

The results were dissapointing. Transfer rate was between 13 & 15
K-bytes/second, on each network, in each direction. This implies to me that the
bottleneck is not in hardware, but in the AppleShare software itself. Maybe the
hard disk on the EtherTalk server had a relatively slow SCSI transfer rate, but
I doubt that the difference was significant.

Based on all this, I wouldn't run out and buy Ethernet just to improve
AppleShare. Admittedly this test was less than exhaustive, but I don't think the
results are out of line. If anyone out there has done a better comparitive
study, I'd like to hear about it.

Lee Ankeny
laa@lanl.gov