dummynet dropping too many packets

[Robert Watson]

On Sat, 17 Oct 2009, rihad wrote:

> P.S.: BTW, there's a small admin-type inconsistency in FreeBSD 7.1: 
> /etc/rc.firewall gets executed before values set by /etc/sysctl.conf are in 
> effect, so "queue 2000" isn't allowed in ipfw pipe rules (as 
> net.inet.ip.dummynet.pipe_slot_limit is only 100 by default), so the rules 
> are silently failing without any trace in the log files - I only saw the 
> errors at the console.

This is awkward to fix for sysctls, because the firewall module may not be 
loaded until the firewall stage of the boot process, so the sysctl wouldn't 
take effect (and perhaps this is what you're seeing, in fact?).

Some sysctls have associated loader tunables, which you can set in 
/boot/loader.conf (and affect configuration when the module is loaded), but it 
looks like that isn't true for net.inet.ip.dummynet.pipe_slot_limit.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge