FreeBSD-6.1/amd64 bge(4) driver performance problems

[Josh Paetzel]

On Tuesday 28 November 2006 12:47, Vladimir Terziev wrote:
> 	Hi,
>
> 	i have a machine with Pentium 4-D processor utilizing
> FreeBSD-6.1-RELEASE-p10/amd64.
>
> 	The machine is running SMP kernel.
>
> 	The machine has 2 on-board Broadcom BCM5721 NICs, which are
> handeled by the bge(4) driver and 4 D-Link DL10050 NICs, which are
> handeled by the ste(4) driver. Machine is targeted for a
> gateway/firewall and will handle a big amount of network traffic.
>
> 	It seems the bge(4) driver has severe performance problems (may be
> especially in my configuration). I tried test scp(1) to a remote
> machine, using one of the BCM5721 NICs. The average speed which has
> been reached was 200kBps.
>
> 	Just for comparison, when i tryed the same test scp(1), to the
> same remote machine, but using one of the D-Link DL10050 NICs, the
> average speed which has been reached was 10MBps.
>
> 	Could someone point me to a good performance tuning document for
> bge(4) handeled NICs, under SMP kernel or at all?
>
> 	Thanks in advance!
>
> 		Vladimir

So you have 2 gig-E and 4 100tx interfaces on the same PCI bus?  If so 
you're going to run into bus saturation long before you're able to 
max out the throughput on the NICs.

Which isn't to say that 200 kBps isn't a problem, but perhaps you are 
dealing with a bad cable or switchport.

-- 
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel