Software Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i

Troubleshooting
Common Problems
Appendix B 471
Slow Network Performance
When using swinstall or swcopy in an environment where network
bandwidth is the “bottleneck,” the file transfer rate between source and
target can become very slow.
Resolution The compress_files=true option compresses files transferred from a
source depot to a target. This can reduce network usage by
approximately 50%; the exact amount of compression depends on the
type of files. Binary files compress less than 50%, text files more.
The greatest throughput improvements are seen when transfers are
across a slow network (approximately 50kbyte/sec or less), and the
source depot server is serving a few target hosts at a time.
NOTE This option should be set to true only when network bandwidth is clearly
restricting total throughput. If this option is used with a fast network or
with a depot server simultaneously connected to many target hosts, this
option can actually reduce overall throughput or performance, unless the
source depot is already compressed.
If it is not clear that this option will help in your situation, compare the
throughput of a few install or copy tasks (both with and without
compression) before changing this option value.
See Chapter 8, “Reliability and Performance,” on page 237 for more
information about performance options.