Hello,
Anyone have any positive (or negative) experience of Cisco Wide Area File Systems (File Engine products) or any similar equipemnt.
I am particularly interested in experience with Long Fat Pipes and CIFS (SMB) (Windows shares) and MS Office applications and file "Exploring" however any field reports at all would be very useful.
Long and Fat in this context are 80ms RTT and 45 and 100Mbps.
The critical factors are:-
1.Windows CIFS transfer at MOST 64k Bytes each RTT (max read/write size is 64kB and it waits for completion before it requests {or sends} another block) and in practise (for read) I see an average of 32k per RTT (60kB-then-4kB or 32kB-then-32kB).
- Windows needs about 6 RTTs to read the first byte of a file. The dance goes something like this
- Hello do you have a file called something like...
- Well then let me make sure I can open it
- Now close it
- Now open it (for real)
- Read first bloc.
I only seem to have 5. Above is an approximation.
The File Engines claim to be a Band Aid which improves on these matters.