Hi, we have a firebird (1.5.4) database on a remote suse linux server,
and we are getting really slow performance. Our ping time to the
server is 250-300ms.
As an example, I connected via IBExpert, and after a really slow
startup if I dbl-click a table to bring up its details, this takes 20
seconds.
We ran Wireshark (aka Ethereal) on the connection and it seems the
dialog between IBExpert and the remote DB Server is a mixture of TCP
and "GDS DB" protocols. The TCP packets all seem to be processed quite
quickly, but the GDS DB ones are really slow... typically 300-400ms
for each packet. So it would appear all the GDS DB packets are sent
synchronously or have extra handshaking. Because there is so much
to-and-fro'ing, this adds up to quite a long time.

If there is extra handshaking or synchronous behaviour, is there some
settings we can switch off (in firebird) to speed things up? I gather
Firebird 2 may have improved this protocol, but for now we must remain
on 1.5.4.
[When we run our main application, normal startup (includes a lot of
database I/O) with a local database is about 10 seconds, but with the
remote database, 20 minutes!!]

Thanks in advance,
Phil