Slow TFTP on 3560 PoE-24

[james-otto]

Hi all,

TFTP is very slow on a 3560 am just wondering if any of you know why? FTP takes around 150 seconds to copy a 6 Meg file but TFTP takes over 20 minutes.

IOS 12.2(25)SEE2 and SEE1.

[bregimand]

Are you just copying an image from your pc right to the switch? Can you post a config?

Thanks,

ben

[james-otto]

Hi Ben,

Yes I am tring to copy directly from my PC.

Will post a config soon.

I also tried ping tests of variable sizes from 36 to 1500 bytes OK.

James

[mbroberson1]

Use FTP instead. TFTP takes way too long or either I am just very impatient. The Cisco switch/router will use anonymous automatically for authentication. Is all you have to do is install the FTP service from the Windows disk, make sure the ftp service is running and drop your IOS file in the c:\inetpub\ftproot directory and make sure that allow only anonymous is checkboxed. Once you use FTP you may never go back to TFTP. TFTP craps out around 32MB, virturally limitless with FTP. I copied a 36MB file for a route upgrade and the copy took maybe 30 to 45 seconds!

Hope this helps,

Brandon

[james-otto]

Please find attached the output from:-

sh run

sh ver

copy tftp flash

The speed is much better now, the only issue is the "0's" in the copy tftp flash output, what do they mean? (Refer attachment)

The TFTP server I used was SolarWinds TFTP server 5.3.23.

Also the problem does not occur when I use Pumpkin as the TFTP server

Thank you for the responses.

James

[bregimand]

James-

I can't get your attachment, but I have a suggestion anyway. Download TFTPD32 and use that as your tftp server on the pc that you have directly connected to the switch.

I'll bet if you did an ethereal trace of the tftp session from Solarwinds you'd see something wierd going on.

http://tftpd32.jounin.net/

HTH, Ben

[james-otto]

Thank you Ben,

Looks like a SolarWinds/Cisco compatibility issue.

James

[wochanda]

TFTP is a UDP based application, with its own mechanism for flow-control. I may be wrong, but I believe every packet sent from the server must be individually acknowledged.

FTP uses TCP, allowing it to leverage the sliding window for higher-speed transfers.

[mbroberson1]

Why would you even want to use TFTP? Always use FTP.