Frequent pauses with Linux-based router

[Bruce M. Simpson]

Sean C. Farley wrote:
> I have noticed that with a Linux-based Netgear DG834G (DSL modem)
> frequent pauses (example[1]) between external systems and 7-STABLE
> (March 14th).  At first, I thought it was ipfilter or ipnat, but I took
> those out of the picture by activating telnet on the router and
> connecting directly to it.  Even running "ls /usr/sbin" on the router
> would pause occasionally.  I did not (or did not recall) have these
> problems with 6-STABLE (post 6.2).  I switched out the NIC (FA-311 (sis)
> to a FA-310 (dc)), cable and tried different ports on the modem by which
> to connect.  I also tried disabling all RFC sysctl's and SACK.  Nothing
> helped.
>
> Finally, I brought out an old DSL modem (SpeedStream 5660).  This fixed
> the issue.  I think this maybe a specific issue between Linux
> (2.4.17_mvl21-malta-mips_fp_le) and FreeBSD 7.  Is there anything else I
> may test to see what is happening?

OT: Hang on, are you saying you're running a MIPS MALTA targeted Linux 
kernel on a Netgear DG834G? That would be interesting as a test platform 
for FreeBSD/mips, considering the platform support for Malta is already 
there. I had a go at doing the Broadcom Sentry5 SoC last year but hadn't 
finished anything.

Long shot, but are 802.3 pause frames appearing anywhere, ie can you 
test with a crossover cable?
Have you done a BER test with UDP or something like that to try to rule 
out non-TCP protocols?

cheers
BMS