[arachne] Re: Slow download speed with Arachne on DSL line

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 13:34:52 +0000, Udo Kuhnt wrote:

> Hi all!

> Ever since I switched to DSL in April 2001, Arachne has been much slower
> in downloading large files from the internet than other download tools
> for DOS - about 1/3rd to 1/4th. Which is strange since I remember that
> one of the reasons for switching from Netscape to Arachne in 1998 was
> that it was faster than Netscape. I already told Michael Polak about
> this back then, but never received a reply.

> The slow download speed, which I thought was due to Arachne transmitting
> redundant protocol information or something was annoying but tolerable -
> until I recently upgraded to a DSL speed of 2048 Kb/s. Now, the speed of
> other tools like CURL has risen proportionally whereas Arachne's speed
> has remained more or less the same.

> In a test in which I downloaded a large file from the server of my ISP,
> CURL reached 235 KB/s, whereas Arachne only achieved about 29 KB/s, that
> is only 1/8th! So I am definetely not talking about a small drop in
> download speed when Arachne is used but about most of the bandwidth
> being unused.

> Also, it has become obvious that this cannot be caused by redundant
> protocol info being transmitted, otherwise there would have been at
> least a proportional increase in download speed.

> Has anyone experienced similar problems with Arachne on a broadband
> connection?

> Regards,

> Udo

Hmmmm, You noticed this too ???

In Nov of last year, I too 'upgraded' from 56k dialup to 1.5mbit/sec DSL

My experience is the same as yours.

Arachne (all versions back to and including v1.0), give me an absolute
max through-put of 60kb/sec (600kbit/sec)

All of my other apps (DOS, Win98 and Linux), achieve full-speed of
150kb/sec (1.5mbit/sec), max through-put.

I have a feeling that the problem lies in this 16bit version of the
WATTCP library we are using to achieve our TPC/IP stack.

All of my other apps (DOS Lynx v2.85.1, Win98 and Linux), are using a
32bit TCP/IP stack.

The only DOS app I have which is also uses a 16bit TCP/IP stack
is FTP.EXE with-which I also have very slow through-put rates.

This however is still not conclusive proof that 16bit vs 32bit is the
problem.

Do you happen to have any DOS, Windows or Linux http apps that use
a 16bit TCP/IP stack (but for http not ftp) ?

If we can find some other 16bit http apps that also have slow
through-put rates.... that would confirm my suspicians.

CC to arachne4dos@xxxxxxxxxxxx, arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
      (will also forward to ArachneBugs group at Yahoo)



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