RHEL7 Workstation Latency Verses Win10
Semi click-bate title I know but I have noticed there's a general speed difference when it comes to the Windows 10 and the RHEL7 workstations. I'm a bit limited in measurement resources go. I have to use my own scripts that run mtr, wget and few free speed test servers. Given that the workstations all share the same route why would Win10 be 4/5Mbs faster?
I used RHEL's network optimization pdf but there's still that slight difference. I know it's not too much; I can't seem to explain the difference. I did noticed that Win10 is running a higher Intel network driver. The RHEL driver is a few generations behind so maybe that's why? I don't know, has anyone else run across this recently?
I included my simple perl script "site_check". I just picked up perl a few months ago so its probably pretty bad; basically uses wget to test my connection I run it every half hour or so via cron job.
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Red Hat
Guru
7257 points
The PDF is the older first version, the current article is always at: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Network Performance Tuning Guide. Jon and I have some revisions to make and new sections to add, but we haven't gotten around to it yet.
At a guess, Windows has an OS-wide DNS cache but Linux doesn't (by default). By running 1000 separate subprocesses of wget you're doing a thousand DNS lookups to the nameserver on Linux, where 999 of those will probably be serviced instantly on Windows.
Overall I'm not sure a thousand wgets to websites is a good way to test the health of your individual systems.
For hosts directly-connected to the internet, I would use a method which is designed to measure latency and throughput such as speedtest-cli.
For systems inside your LAN I wouldn't even go outside the internet router. The internet is just another variable which you can't control so will affect your test results. Use mtr report mode and iperf3 to measure latency and speed to another host inside the LAN.
Community Member
88 points
I appreciate the quick response; didn't realize that Windows had an OS-wide DNS cache. Looking back at my perl script I think that could help explain the slight latency difference between the two. The speedtest-cli looks interesting; I will see about setting that up today and adding it to the LAN measurements using mtr/iperf3.
Thanks a bunch this has saved me a lot of time!
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