Performance Intel Pro 1000 MT (PWLA8490MT)

[Michael DeMan]

The rule of thumb I have seen on Intel/UNIX based routers is that you 
want 1GHz of CPU for every gigabit of throughput.

Also, on gigabit NICs, make sure you have a 64-bit PCI bus on the 
motherboard.



Michael F. DeMan
Director of Technology
OpenAccess Network Services
Bellingham, WA 98225
michael at staff.openaccess.org
360-647-0785
On Apr 19, 2005, at 1:40 PM, Eivind Hestnes wrote:

> Thanks for the advice. Didn't do any difference, though.. Perhaps I 
> should try to increase the polling frequency..
>
> Jerald Von Dipple wrote:
>
>> Hey man
>>
>> You need to bump
>>
>> kern.polling.burst: 150
>>
>> Upto at least 150000
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jerald Von D.
>>
>> On 4/19/05, Eivind Hestnes <eivind at stabbursmoen.no> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have an Intel Pro 1000 MT (PWLA8490MT) NIC (em(4) driver 1.7.35) 
>>> installed
>>> in a Pentium III 500 Mhz with 512 MB RAM (100 Mhz) running FreeBSD 
>>> 5.4-RC3.
>>> The machine is routing traffic between multiple VLANs. Recently I 
>>> did a
>>> benchmark with/without device polling enabled. Without device 
>>> polling I was
>>> able to transfer roughly 180 Mbit/s. The router however was 
>>> suffering when
>>> doing this benchmark. Interrupt load was peaking 100% - overall the 
>>> system
>>> itself was quite unusable (_very_ high system load). With device 
>>> polling
>>> enabled the interrupt kept stable around 40-50% and max transfer 
>>> rate was
>>> nearly 70 Mbit/s. Not very scientific tests, but it gave me a pin 
>>> point.
>>>
>>> However, a Pentium III in combination with a good NIC should in my 
>>> opinion
>>> be a respectful router.. but I'm not satisfied with the results. The 
>>> pf
>>> ruleset is like nothing, and the kernel is stripped and customized 
>>> for best
>>> performance.
>>>
>>> Any tweaking tips for making my router perform better?
>>>
>>> Debug information:
>>> eivind at core-gw:~$ sysctl -a | grep kern.polling
>>> kern.polling.burst: 150
>>> kern.polling.each_burst: 5
>>> kern.polling.burst_max: 150
>>> kern.polling.idle_poll: 0
>>> kern.polling.poll_in_trap: 0
>>> kern.polling.user_frac: 50
>>> kern.polling.reg_frac: 20
>>> kern.polling.short_ticks: 1411
>>> kern.polling.lost_polls: 720
>>> kern.polling.pending_polls: 0
>>> kern.polling.residual_burst: 0
>>> kern.polling.handlers: 0
>>> kern.polling.enable: 1
>>> kern.polling.phase: 0
>>> kern.polling.suspect: 186
>>> kern.polling.stalled: 0
>>> kern.polling.idlepoll_sleeping: 1
>>>
>>> eivind at core-gw:~$ cat /etc/sysctl.conf
>>> net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
>>> net.inet.ip.fastforwarding=1
>>> net.inet.carp.preempt=1
>>> kern.polling.enable=1
>>>
>>> HZ set to 1000 as recommended in README for the em(4) driver. Driver 
>>> is of
>>> cource compiled into kernel.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Eivind Hestnes
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-performance
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>>> "freebsd-performance-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>>>
>>>
>
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