[Info-vax] Help to eliminate delay in establishing FTP connection (VMS V7.x on VAX with MultiNet V4.4)

[Dave Froble]

On 3/19/2021 12:05 AM, Tad Winters wrote:
> I'm hoping that you might give me some ideas to remediate this problem.
>
> A long time customer, for whom I've done very little work for many
> years, has been running with their solution for a very long time.
> Within the last six weeks, they told me they were seeing delays in
> connecting to the system with FTP.  He has been using PHP for many years
> to upload some files to his VMS system to be processed by an
> application.  He added some timing in the PHP calls and what it revealed
> is a consistent 30 second delay from connecting until being logged in.
> I confirmed this with Filezilla.
>
> At first, I thought it must have something to do with DNS, as it
> appeared the forwarders were all pointing to the internet, and I thought
> it must be attempting to do some reverse lookup.
> I made some changes, including defining a logical for MultiNet FTP to
> have a fast timeout, and thought it would start working better.  Not so.
>
> I modified a few FTP server setting, with the idea that the process may
> be a little more snappy.  Logins from an interactive session to
> localhost seem to occur with no delay, but from Filezilla, it's still 30
> seconds of delay.
>
> Thinking it might be part of the login stream, I copied the username to
> a new account and modified that new account to have NLA0: for LGICMD.
> It was late in the day, to I temporarily deassigned SYS$SYLOGIN, and
> tried logging in again from Filezilla.  No change.
>
> I ran MULTINET CHECK and it was generating errors.  I downloaded a new
> named.cache file, corrected the file format and properly placed it.  I
> also added the IP address from which I'm connecting and the IP address
> of the default gateway to the hosts table, compiled and installed it,
> and then restarted MultiNet.  After that, MULTINET CHECK reported no
> errors.
>
> I used MULTINET SHOW /CONNECTIONS when I initiated my connection from
> Filezilla, and repeated the command several times.  It was probably
> about 20 seconds before the FTP connection showed up, but still a total
> of 30 seconds before the client showed it was logged in.
>
> The customer says he's not made any changes, including still using the
> same version of PHP.  The VAX is virtualized with vtVAX on a physical
> server running Windows Server, which the customer has said has had no
> updates.  I don't know when he might have last changed the network
> device, to which he indicates it is connected, but it wasn't recently.
>
> It seems very strange that this started when "nothing" changed, and as I
> said, my first thought was references to internet things, which can
> change, might have caused such, but I feel like I've eliminated this.
>
> What am I missing?
>
> P.S. If DiBOL was available on the new VMS architecture, I'd love to
> push for them to buy, but the Synergex product is far too expensive,
> since they charge per seat for run time and the original DiBOL was a
> free run time, only charging for the compiler.
>

You don't mention what version of VAX/VMS.

There was an issue with TCP/IP V5.0, which could cause a one minute 
delay in connecting.  But you're on Multinet.  Still, something to consider.

Ok, "what has changed?"

"vtVAX on a physical server running Windows Server, which the customer 
has said has had no updates"

Can this be verified?  I'd suspect WEENDOZE updates before VMS updates.

Maybe install TCP/IP and see how it performs.  This could point to, or 
away, from Multinet.

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc.      E-Mail: davef at tsoft-inc.com
DFE Ultralights, Inc.
170 Grimplin Road
Vanderbilt, PA  15486