C2960 IOS Upgrade (archive tftp) very slow

[markus.forrer]

Dear Community,

In Research for my SmartInstall Project I have taken the time it takes for a C2960LT-T 26 Port Switch to upgrade the IOS.

Since Smart Install does not show much console output I've tested this the old way by using "archive download-sw /overwrite tftp://...../image file.tar"

Now when it starts, it load the image, then probably looks at the image, says it can't buffer it and downloads it again. After that it looks at the info file and downloads it one more time (3x already). After that it finally starts unpacking..

The Time I measured was 21 minutes and 25 seconds. That's horribly long..

Is there any way that I could speed up this process? What I have tried so far:

- Delete the old IOS before downloading the new one (time: 21 minutes 11 seconds)

- Try a different TFTP-Server (same time)

I have attached a picture of the output from the switch i've described.

Do you have any sort of hint that would help me speed up this process?

Sincerly,

Dario Doerflinger

(Apprentice of markus.forrer)

[IAN WHITMORE]

Try FTP and compare the times.

Regards,

Ian

[N W]

Hi

Try TFTPing it up to the switch as normal, then run the boot system command for the new IOS and it should be much quicker. Also check your TFTP server speed and duplex

Noel

[markus.forrer]

Thank you for the response.

I willl rate answers when the issue is resolved.

I have now tried as a first approach to your suggestions to use ftp instead of tftp.

The difference ist magnificent:

The Time measured with ftp is 7 Minutes and 30 seconds, which is actually quite good compared to 21 minutes.

Now, sine I have installed the FTP Server on my client machine (win 7), I see the access and tansfers as they happen (filezilla as ftpserver). I saw that the Switch downloads the image three times at magnificent speed (400 kb/s) and when it's done the third time it starts unpacking but at the same time it starts downloading the same image once more, but this time really slow (30kb/s). At the same time the switch is unpacking the html folder for the web-based-manager.

What I don't understand is:

- Why does the switch download the image 3 times before unpacking?

- Why does the switch download it one more time while unpacking?

- Why is the speed that much slower when the forth download takes place?

Could this be a bug of the 12.2 55 SE1 Release? Or is this hardware-related?

Anyone has an idea where I can find bugs/confirmed misbehaviors of the current IOS Releases so that I could check for that issue?

Iv'e tried Google with many many different queries and none seems to be the one that leads to my answer.

edit: -> FTP ist not (yet) supported for Smart Install, I will have to use tftp instead..

[markus.forrer]

This issue seems to be coming from the switch.

After some research I found out that the packet size transferred by the tftp server is set by the client.

In other words, I could tell my tftp server which paket size it should use as long as I want, when a client requests a file from the server it specifies the block size itself.

So the Switch connecting to the tftp says which paket size it wants.. In a Wireshark-Sniff I was no able to determine these settings being transferred to the tftp server in any paket.. What I'm trying to say is that the Switch should tell the tftp server what paket size he should send, but doesn't.

Is there a way that I could set these settings myself?