Cisco 3550 and Macintosh, poor performance

pixelpusher · ‎11-05-2003

We recently installed a Catalyst 3550 switch for our Mac design group. They report excellent performance to the internet but poor performance between their computers. Whether it is between two computers or their file server, performance is very slow, in the 20-50KB/s range. The ports are locked to 100/full, and we are running the latest code on the switch. We don't know what is causing the poor performance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

jshumaker · ‎11-06-2003

Make sure you assign the ports connected to the Macs to enable portfast. The Mac is trying to get an Appletalk address the same time the switch is trying to setup the port for spanning-tree.

I would guess you are getting a message on your Macs once they have started that says "Your Appletalk network is now Available"

pixelpusher · ‎11-06-2003

I have not seen that message yet.

I have tested on two systems with and without Appletalk and they perform the same. There are other clients on the network using Appletalk. Could they be interfering with the rest of the systems on the switch? Thanks for the reply. I will double check the settings today.

jshumaker · ‎11-06-2003

Unless you are running Mac OSX with Appletalk turned off your Macs will require and Appletalk address.

pixelpusher · ‎11-06-2003

Currently only a few systems are running OSX. We will be moving everyone to OSX very soon. The systems I have been using for testing are OSX, and I was able to test a number of different methods and protocols. I was curious if the other systems on our network, running OS9 and using Appletalk, could degrade performance for everyone on the switch.

jshumaker · ‎11-07-2003

If you are trying to connect to one of the OS9 machines from the OSX with Appletalk. It could slow down the response time, because the OS9 machine does not have a good Appletalk address. By turning on portfast on the ports should take care of the problem.

andrew.butterworth · ‎11-07-2003

You say 'the ports are locked at 100/full' are you sure they are fixed on the Apple-MAC end as well as the switch? I would have just left them on Auto........

Andy

pixelpusher · ‎11-07-2003

The ports are locked on the switch. The Macintoshes are autodetecting that speed. So far, they seem to do it every time. I had originally locked the ports on the Macs also, but it didn't seem to make a difference.