How to solve slow networking in VMWare
I use VMWare Workstation with a Kubuntu host and a Windows XP guest. I had very slow network connectivity from the guest to both the Internet and the host (opening folders as SAMBA shares, using rsync, etc.), on the order of around 4kilobits/second, instead of several hundred.
Did a bit of searching on VMWare's site, and found "VMTN Discussion Forums: FC5 kernel 2.6.17.1 update ==> very slow network between host and guest", which included this quick and easy fix:
Set the tcp segmentation offload to off:
$ sudo ethtool -k eth0 rx-checksumming: off tx-checksumming: off scatter-gather: off tcp segmentation offload: off $ sudo ethtool -K eth0 tso off
Note: I modified the formatting a little bit and added the sudo command.
The capital K command immediately returned normal networking speeds to my VMWare guest. Hooray!
On my system sudo ethtool -k output this:
Offload parameters for eth0: Cannot get device rx csum settings: Operation not supported Cannot get device tx csum settings: Operation not supported Cannot get device scatter-gather settings: Operation not supported rx-checksumming: off tx-checksumming: off scatter-gather: off tcp segmentation offload: on
The "Operation not supported" messages do not seem detrimental.