Slow transfer with 21140 card

[Mark Fardal]

Hi,

I have a Debian linux system that seems to have subpar network transfer
rates.  The system manager here changed the network from 10 to 100 Mbits/s,
and most of the computers promptly saw their communication speeds upgraded,
but not mine.  For example, ftping a large file to or from my machine gives
a transfer rate of 2.7 Mbits/s, whereas I get 60 Mbits/s between two machines
that appear to be working correctly.  Maybe this means that there is some
overhead in the file transfer.

The system manager's theory was that my ethernet card was bad, so he just
swapped in another one, but with no effect.  There are apparently a couple
of other machines behaving like mine as well.

I should say that I know zilch about networks, cards, or low-level
system stuff; I'm just hoping to play shuttle diplomat between this
newsgroup, the system manager, and the machine, and hope someone can
figure out what's wrong.

Here is what tulip-diag says:

weka# ./tulip-diag -aemf
tulip-diag.c:v1.03 5/20/98 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Chip Index #1: Found a DC21140 Tulip card at PCI bus 0, device 11 I/O 0xb800.
Digital DS21140 Tulip chip registers at 0xb800:
  ffa04800 ffffffff ffffffff 00fff820 00fffa20 fc660000 320e2202 ffffebef
  e0000000 fffd83ff ffffffff fffe0000 ffffff00 ffffffff 1c09fdc0 fffffec8
 The Rx process state is 'Waiting for packets'.
 The Tx process state is 'Idle'.
Transmit started, Receive started, full-duplex.
 The transmit threshold is 128.
 Port selection is MII, full-duplex.
EEPROM transceiver/media description for the DC21140 chip.

Leaf node at offset 30, default media type 0800 (Autosense).
 CSR12 direction setting bits 00.
 1 transceiver description blocks:
  Media MII,  block type 1.
   MII interface PHY 0 (media type 11).
 MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x782d.

and here is a segment of the output from dmesg:

tulip.c:v0.89F 5/12/98 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
eth0: Digital DS21140 Tulip at 0xb800, 00 c0 f0 30 dd 0e, IRQ 11.
eth0:  EEPROM default media type Autosense.
eth0:  Index #0 - Media MII (#11) described by a 21140 MII PHY (1) block.
eth0:  MII transceiver found at MDIO address 1, config 3000 status 7829.
eth0:  Advertising 01e1 on PHY 1, previously advertising 01e1.
eth0:  Advertising 01e1 on PHY 0 (1).
tulip.c:v0.89F 5/12/98 becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
eth0: Digital DS21140 Tulip at 0xb800, 00 c0 f0 30 dd 0e, IRQ 11.
eth0:  EEPROM default media type Autosense.
eth0:  Index #0 - Media MII (#11) described by a 21140 MII PHY (1) block.
eth0:  MII transceiver found at MDIO address 1, config 2100 status 7809.
eth0:  Advertising 01e1 on PHY 1, previously advertising 01e1.
eth0:  Advertising 01e1 on PHY 0 (1).


One of the four little lights on the card indicates "FDX", for full-duplex
(100 Mbits/s), right?  Any ideas for things to check would be appreciated.

thanks,
Mark Fardal
UMass