Enabling High Performance Data Transfers

System Specific Notes for System Administrators (and Privileged Users)


These notes are intended to help users and system administrators maximize TCP/IP performance on their computer systems. They summarize all of the end-system (computer system) network tuning issues including a tutorial on TCP tuning, easy configuration checks for non-experts, and a repository of operating system specific instructions for getting the best possible network performance on these platforms

This material is currently under active revision. Please send any suggestions, additions or  corrections to us at nettune@psc.edu so we can keep the information here as up-to-date as possible.

• Introduction
• Tutorial
  • Bandwidth*Delay Products (BDP)
  • Buffers
  • Computing the BDP
• High Performance Networking Options
  • Maximum Buffer Sizes on the host
  • Socket Buffers sizes
  • Negotiating TCP Large Windows options (RFC1323)
  • TCP Selective Acknowledgments (SACK, RFC2018)
  • Path MTU
• Using Web Based Network Diagnostic Servers
  • Quick Link: NPAD Pathdiag end system and last mile diagnostics at PSC
    • Quick Link: NPAD Documentation and additional servers.
  • Quick Link: SYN Test Server
  • Quick Link: ORNL Bandwidth Tester
  • Quick Link: ANL Network Diagnostic Tool
• Detailed Procedures for System tuning and Raising network limits for:
  • FreeBSD
  • on Linux
  • on Macintosh OS X
  • on Sun Solaris Systems
  • on Windows XP
  • or on other historical Operating Systems.
• Acknowledgments