TCP stalls and VJ compression

I don't know if this had been resolved yet or not. This is the experience
I've had this evening.

I've been having problems with stalled downloads, mainly in Netscape,
for several weeks now. Also, I've been unable to rsync from linuxcare;
rsync would stop once I saw the "receiving file list..." message.
I was searching through the archives tonight, and found the recommendation to
disable Van Jacobsen header compression on the PPP link. I wasn't sure this
would work, though, since I'm not actually running PPP on my machine; I
connect over Ethernet through a Mac running IPNetRouter for a PPP dialup.
However, disabling header compressoin solved both of my problems: Netscape
downloads without stalling, and I can rsync from linuxcare again.

I'm running a 2.2.15-pre6 kernel, which I complied myself from source
downloaded earlier today. Again, I don't know if this is still an open
problem, or if I'm just missing a patch that's already been developed.
If anyone is working on this, I'd be happy to give a more detailed
account of my setup and the situation before and after my fix.

Clint Hepner
chepner@cs.dartmouth.edu

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On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Clint Hepner wrote:

I've been having problems with stalled downloads, mainly in Netscape,
for several weeks now. Also, I've been unable to rsync from linuxcare;
rsync would stop once I saw the "receiving file list..." message.
I was searching through the archives tonight, and found the recommendation to
disable Van Jacobsen header compression on the PPP link. I wasn't sure this
would work, though, since I'm not actually running PPP on my machine; I
connect over Ethernet through a Mac running IPNetRouter for a PPP dialup.
However, disabling header compressoin solved both of my problems: Netscape
downloads without stalling, and I can rsync from linuxcare again.

Where exactly and how did you disable TCP header compression?  And what's
at the other end of your PPP link?

--
Paul Mackerras, Senior Open Source Researcher, Linuxcare, Inc.
+61 2 6262 8990 tel, +61 2 6262 8991 fax
paulus@linuxcare.com.au, http://www.linuxcare.com.au/
Linuxcare.  Support for the revolution.

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/