Low network performance after upgrade from FreeBSD 4.8 to 6.0

[Bohuslav Plucinsky]

Hello,

here is the output from "top -S" :

last pid:  1570;  load averages:  0.56,  0.20,  0.10
up 0+02:59:36  14:03:53
76 processes:  4 running, 47 sleeping, 2 stopped, 23 waiting
CPU states: 14.9% user,  0.0% nice, 57.4% system, 27.7% interrupt,  0.0% idle
Mem: 17M Active, 6084K Inact, 14M Wired, 11M Buf, 17M Free
Swap: 500M Total, 500M Free
 
  PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
   11 root        1 171   52     0K     8K RUN    173:00 39.55% idle
 1414 root        1 115    0  1432K   908K RUN      0:22 39.36% natd
   22 root        1 -68 -187     0K     8K WAIT     1:07 10.40% irq11: xl1
   21 root        1 -68 -187     0K     8K WAIT     0:30  3.32% irq10: xl0
   27 root        1 -44 -163     0K     8K WAIT     1:39  2.39% swi1: net
   30 root        1 -16    0     0K     8K -        0:07  0.05% yarrow
   28 root        1 -32 -151     0K     8K RUN      0:30  0.00% swi4: clock sio
  540 plk         1  96    0  2140K  1844K select   0:03  0.00% screen
   39 root        1 171   52     0K     8K pgzero   0:02  0.00% pagezero
  550 root        1  20    0  4460K  2956K pause    0:02  0.00% tcsh
   47 root        1 -16    0     0K     8K -        0:01  0.00% schedcpu
 1062 plk         1  96    0  6076K  3140K select   0:01  0.00% sshd
    2 root        1  -8    0     0K     8K -        0:01  0.00% g_event
    4 root        1  -8    0     0K     8K -        0:01  0.00% g_down
    3 root        1  -8    0     0K     8K -        0:01  0.00% g_up
  447 root        1  96    0  3396K  2684K select   0:01  0.00% sendmail
 1050 root        1   5    0  4440K  2928K ttyin    0:01  0.00% tcsh
 1342 root        1  96    0  2336K  1616K RUN      0:01  0.00% top
   41 root        1  20    0     0K     8K syncer   0:01  0.00% syncer
  327 root        1  96    0  1328K   904K select   0:00  0.00% syslogd
 1059 root        1   4    0  6100K  3128K sbwait   0:00  0.00% sshd
   42 root        1  -4    0     0K     8K vlruwt   0:00  0.00% vnlru
   40 root        1 -16    0     0K     8K psleep   0:00  0.00% bufdaemon
  463 root        1   8    0  1312K  1032K nanslp   0:00  0.00% cron
    7 root        1  -8    0     0K     8K -        0:00  0.00% fdc0
  670 plk         1  20    0  4092K  2692K pause    0:00  0.00% tcsh
 1357 root        1  96    0  3436K  2304K STOP     0:00  0.00% joe
  546 plk         1  20    0  4092K  2692K pause    0:00  0.00% tcsh
  542 plk         1   5    0  3996K  2576K ttyin    0:00  0.00% tcsh
 1063 plk         1  20    0  3984K  2604K pause    0:00  0.00% tcsh
 1067 plk         1  20    0  1928K  1556K pause    0:00  0.00% screen
   25 root        1 -64 -183     0K     8K WAIT     0:00  0.00% irq14: ata0


I did try to enable DEVICE_POLLING also, but this didn't help. The CPU load 
decreased, but the throughput decreased from 24Mbps to 18Mbps also.

I've commented out 
 #options	MROUTING
 #options	IPFIREWALL_FORWARD
 #options       IPFIREWALL_FORWARD_EXTENDED
 #options       IPSTEALTH
 #options       TCPDEBUG
 #options 	IPSEC_DEBUG
 #options 	IPSEC
 #options 	IPSEC_ESP

(it's not necessary for me in this time), but it has no impact to this
problem. The throughput is still low.


I've tried PF, suggested by Martin Hudec and it seems that PF does not
have this performance problem. I like IPFW, I use it since year 1999,
but probably is time to switch to PF.


Thanks all for their reply.

Regards,
Bohus




On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 12:44:09PM -0500, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 02:10:20PM +0100, Bohuslav Plucinsky wrote:
> 
> > The "top" utility shows 100% CPU load:
> 
> What about top -S to show the kernel threads (since that's what's
> using 90% of your CPU)?
> 
> > last pid:   771;  load averages:  0.25,  0.06,  0.02                                                                   up 0+00:24:30  14:08:32
> > 27 processes:  2 running, 25 sleeping
> > CPU states:  8.8% user,  0.0% nice, 59.6% system, 31.6% interrupt,  0.0% idle
> > Mem: 16M Active, 4752K Inact, 11M Wired, 8144K Buf, 22M Free
> > Swap: 500M Total, 500M Free
> > 
> >   PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
> >   229 root        1 105    0  1428K   904K RUN      0:35 40.82% natd
> 
> > options		MROUTING		# Multicast routing
> 
> Do you actually use this?
> 
> > options         IPFIREWALL              #firewall
> > options         IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE      #print information about dropped packets
> > options         IPFIREWALL_FORWARD      #enable transparent proxy support
> > options         IPFIREWALL_FORWARD_EXTENDED     #all packet dest changes
> > options         IPSTEALTH               #support for stealth forwarding
> > options		IPDIVERT		#divert sockets
> > options		TCPDEBUG
> > options 	IPSEC_DEBUG		#debug for IP security
> 
> Why do you define the DEBUG settings?  They'll only slow you down, but
> it's probably not the main reason.
> 
> > options		DUMMYNET
> > options 	TCP_DROP_SYNFIN		#drop TCP packets with SYN+FIN
> > options 	INCLUDE_CONFIG_FILE     # Include this file in kernel
> > options 	IPSEC			#IP security
> > options 	IPSEC_ESP		#IP security (crypto; define w/ IPSEC)
> 
> Better to use fast ipsec unless you have a need for ipv6.
> 
> Kris