[c-nsp] Pix to Pix tunnel performance w/Windows File Sharing

Tony Mucker Tony at tonymucker.com
Wed Feb 16 16:56:48 EST 2005


I've just finished setting up an IPSEC tunnel (using DES encryption) 
between a PIX 520 on PIX OS 6.3(3) and a PIX 515-E on PIX OS 6.3(4).

I haven't been able to do a thorough test yet, but Windows File sharing 
is fairly abyssmal.  The PIX 520 sits behind 4 T1s of available 
bandwidth (768KB/sec) and the 515 is has 2 T1s (384KB/sec), but on my 
quick test of trying to pull a file my gkrellm monitor was reporting 
about 30KB/sec.  Contrast that to when I fired up the wrong version of 
VNCViewer (I normally use TightVNC)  and started loading my desktop, 
gkrellm reported about 360KB/sec sustained flowing through my laptop's 
interface.

MTU for both PIXes is set at the default for ethernet, 1500.  I haven't 
checked the Windows file server I was pulling from, but it too should be 
set somewhere aroud 1500.  My next step when I get some time will be to 
get some packet dumps using ethereal to see if there's anything funny 
going on.

In the meantime, has anyone else run into similiar problems?  Or perhaps 
problems with Windows file sharing throughput with remote users 
connected via Cisco's VPN Client?

Thanks
Tony



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