TCP throughput and duplex mismatch

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Observations

  • 2 Mbps were observed from Catania to Frascati - GARR_Catania.GARR_Frascati.bwctl.png
  • About 80 Mbps in the other direction GARR_Frascati.GARR_Catania.bwctl.png
  • The day before, there was around 80Mbps from Catania to Frascati GARR_Catania.GARR_Frascati.bwctl.png

Questions

  1. Why are we getting only 2Mbps between Catania and Frascati?
  2. Why are we getting only 80Mbps from Frascati to Catania in general whilst we would expect up to 1Gbps from the MDM service? For question2, please refer to Why_is_the_TCP_throughput_test_around_80-90Mbps?

Investigations

  • When investigating question2, we discovered that the Catania server is connected to 100Mbps interface, which limits the bandwidth in can use.
  • Let's now investigate the question1.
    1. Looking at the previous days (14/01, 15/01), we found out that the TCP throughput was around 80Mbps and were stable. But on the 15/01, all the measurements after 18:00 dropped to 2Mbps and stayed there.
    2. To the eyes of a network engineer, that the drop occured after 18:00 indicates that the change might be due to a configuration change. (the network operation centers operate most of the time the configuration changes outside the working hours (i.e. before 09:00 and after 18:00).
    3. The Service Desk was contacted and reported the issue to the people responsible of the server. After a quick investigation it occured that the there was an interface erroneously configured as half-dulpex on the router interface that sees the switch.
    4. The configuration was changed after 15:00 GARR_Catania.GARR_Frascati.bwctl.png
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