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Slow download

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Hi,

I am struggling to understand why the downloads from this server start off quickly and then suddenly drop to a crawl. I see there are "TCP windo full" messages early on in the trace, but this is only in the first 100 packets and window scaling is enabled. I was testing this by downloading a 20MB PDF file using "wget" from the client, I had to "ctrl-c" the capture to keep it below 1.5MB to be able to upload to cloudshark but I believe there is enough evidence of the issue in the following captures?

https://www.cloudshark.org/captures/a9124b6343ce - server https://www.cloudshark.org/captures/e82f6c71e0c1 - client

Regards, Elvin

asked 05 Dec '14, 08:21

elfelvin's gravatar image

elfelvin
11234
accept rate: 0%


One Answer:

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The problem seems to be in the server not being able to feed the 'pipe' fast enough.
The client's windowsize offering is higher than what is in flight.
The communication stalls after the push bit is set by the server after 6 full sized MSS.
The filter to detect those is
tcp.srcport==80 and tcp.flags.push==1 and tcp.analysis.bytes_in_flight==8760
Then there is a wait of 8 ms (RTT) before it continues.

So not a network but rather a server problem - I would say...

Regards Matthias

answered 05 Dec '14, 13:42

mrEEde's gravatar image

mrEEde
3.9k152270
accept rate: 20%

It seems that server send limit is bound to 77380(Bytes in flight never moved beyond this),it could be due to send buffer or congestion window limitation from server end because client offered windows size is quite higher.

(07 Dec '14, 23:33) kishan pandey

Matthias is right, Yes in Middle it looks that server is only sending 8760 bytes/Roundtrip.

(08 Dec '14, 06:55) kishan pandey

So, I've looked at the "server" which is a Citrix Netscaler LB and it looks like the "MEM_TCPBUFFP" value is at 93% usage with ErrLmtFailed values incrementing, so I'm currently in contact with Citrix to get their advise on increasing this buffer (http://support.citrix.com/static/oldkc/CTX116779.html) I'll report back on the outcome.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TotalMEM:  (2994699520/5731516416)     Allocated:  2089732480(36.46%)   ActualInUse: 958813336(16.73%)    Free:  3641783936

MEMPOOL MaxAllowd CurAlloc ErrLmtFailed ErrAllocFailed ErrFreeFailed Bytes (Own%)(Overall%)

MEM_PE 62914560 1861824(2.96% 0.03%) 0 0 0 MEM_LB_SERVER 12884901885 15871488(0.12% 0.28%) 0 0 0 MEM_LB_SESSION 408944640 1575936(0.39% 0.03%) 0 0 0 MEM_LB_SERVICE 12884901885 483072(0.00% 0.01%) 0 0 0 MEM_CSWMEM 75497472 703296(0.93% 0.01%) 0 0 0 MEM_IOH 15728640 0(0.00% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_LOGGING 12884901885 16785408(0.13% 0.29%) 0 0 0 MEM_CONN 12884901885 1222650368(9.49% 21.33%) 0 0 0 MEM_SNMP 12884901885 1082752(0.01% 0.02%) 0 0 0 MEM_DEBUG 786432 4608(0.59% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_MISC 12884901885 9483840(0.07% 0.17%) 0 0 0 MEM_SERVMON 12884901885 3331584(0.03% 0.06%) 0 0 0 MEM_IPFRAG 12884901885 0(0.00% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_URLMON 47185920 0(0.00% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_TCPBUFFP 67108863 62914560(93.75% 1.10%) 1550584 0 0 MEM_DCC 31457280 0(0.00% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_DNS 12884901885 25234368(0.20% 0.44%) 0 0 0 MEM_GSLB 12884901885 148416(0.00% 0.00%) 0 0 0 MEM_POLENG 402653184 3617664(0.90% 0.06%) 0 0 0 MEM_AUDITLOG 150994944 1204608(0.80% 0.02%) 0 0 0 MEM_PI_CONFIG 12884901885 41910336(0.33% 0.73%) 0 0 0

(08 Dec ‘14, 07:56) elfelvin