On 6/21/06, Nathaniel Irons <ndi dash l at bumppo dot net> wrote:
>
> I'm testing with scp

scp is probably the worst thing I can think of offhand to test network
throughput.  It's terrible at filling any sort of connection.  Try
iperf:
http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/

Or FTP would also be more reliable and indicative of real throughput
on the connection, iperf is still generally a better test as it takes
more end point hardware out of the equation (disks, etc.).


> Some of our
> offsite people are occasionally dependent on VNC, which is pretty
> frustrating with the outbound bottleneck.
>

That doesn't sound too bad.  VNC is somewhat frustrating on Gb LAN's.
:)  It's absolutely terrible on links with lower bandwidth and higher
latency.  If we're talking about Windows machines, I'd suggest RDP, or
I've really had good results over relatively slow links with NetOp.
NetOp over a VPN with 100 ms latency performs as well as RDP over a
VPN with 20 ms latency in my experience, and either one of those is
vastly better than VNC.

My thought at this point is if VNC is only "pretty frustrating", and
the only test you've done is with scp, you're probably getting
acceptable performance.  Try iperf and see what kind of throughput you
get.

-Chris