nic performance: bce vs em

[Cristiano Deana]

Hi all,

I'm gonna setup a Dell 1955 to use as router. Dual xeon dual core,
with these network cards:

# pciconf -lv | grep -B2 network
    vendor     = 'Broadcom Corporation'
    device     = 'NetXtreme II BCM5708S Gigabit Ethernet'
    class      = network
--
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
    class      = network
--
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
    class      = network
--
    vendor     = 'Broadcom Corporation'
    device     = 'NetXtreme II BCM5708S Gigabit Ethernet'
    class      = network

Now I have a similar machine, with only one CPU and using vlan based interfaces.
A week ago I started collect flow data from interfaces with ng_flow
and I have a high CPU usage:
CPU 0:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system, 21.7% interrupt, 78.3% idle
CPU 1:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  1.6% system, 23.6% interrupt, 74.8% idle
This is right now, with low traffic, so I'm gonna upgrade with new system

Any experience about differences between bce and em? Load, irq...

In peek hours we have 80k pps and 500Mbit per interface.

Thank you

-- 
Cris, member of G.U.F.I
Italian FreeBSD User Group
http://www.gufi.org/