Subject: Odd upload problem with a Mac user

From: Chin Fang <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 19:33:14 +1700 (PDT)

One user of us who was trying to upload (in Mac jargon) several folders
each contains about 15 MB's worth of files.  She is using Fetch 3.01
and MacOS 7.53.  Her connection to the Internet is a 128kbps ISDN.

The machine her account is on is a SS5, with 64MB RAM, running Solaris
2.5 without any patch and wu-ftp 2.4.2 beta 10. The box is part of a
10Mbps ethernet with a point to point T1 link to the Internet with
quite low bandwidth usage. 

The problem she got is described below:

When she tried to upload in folder by folder fashion, every time, after
a few files in the folder were uploaded, she got no connection, connection
reset by the server, unknown directory etc... as error messages.  The funny
thing is that the problem didn't show up in a consistent manner.  Sometimes
more than 200 files in the folder were uploaded before the symptom showed
up.  Sometimes, only after 3 files, the symptom came in and disrupted the
file transfer.

I did a simple and dumb test - from a Ultrix machine (DEC 5000), I dumped
80 small files into the SS5, from 400 miles away.  Didn't have any troubles.

My suspicision is that her Mac Fetch TCP/IP MTU must be adjusted to some
better values or perhaps some other parameters need to be adjusted as well.

The SS5's TCP/IP parameters have been adjusted so the well known
Solaris 2.x bug of over transmitting packets is mitigated.  Anyways,
she needs to transfer over more than 300 MB files from 600 miles away,
and I so far have not been able to figure out any way to help her.
Would appreciate any suggestions, either to our Solaris 2.5 box or her
MacOS box.

Thanks,

Chin Fang
[email-masked]