Performance Intel Pro 1000 MT (PWLA8490MT)

Eivind Hestnes eivind at stabbursmoen.no
Tue Apr 19 14:10:27 PDT 2005


It sounds sensible, but I have also learned that throwing hardware on a 
problem is not always right.. Compared to shiny boxes from Cisco, HP 
etc. a 500 Mhz router is for heavy duty networks. I would try some more 
tweaking before replacing the box with some more spectular hardware.

- E.

Michael DeMan wrote:

> 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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>>>>
>>
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