Packet Loss w/bge & BCM5703 on Dell PE2650

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:49:42PM -0400, Vinny Abello wrote:
> All suggestions welcomed:

Your mbuf counts look OK.  I don't see anything there which looks
like a problem.  If you had packet loss caused by mbuf exhaustion,
your FreeBSD console log would show something.

I've some couple questions:

1) Checked console logs (dmesg -a) to see if there's anything there
   which might give you hints to the problem?
2) Any IPMI modules installed in that Dell box?
3) vmstat -i output?
4) Is there a switch between the Cisco router and the FreeBSD box?
5) If there is a switch between the router and the FreeBSD box, have
   you tried the pings from a box (not the Cisco) on the same switch
   segment as the FreeBSD box?
6) Have you tried pings the other way (FreeBSD box -> box#2, and
   box#2 -> FreeBSD box) to see if its reproducable that way?
7) Does it only happen with ICMP traffic, or can you reproduce the loss
   using something like FTP (slow transfer rates/stalls)?
8) Tried downthrottling to 100mbit (ifconfig_bge0="... media 100baseTX")
   on both sides, to see if it's a gigabit-specific problem?
9) Tried different cabling?  I see the network is gigabit.  You might
   try replacing the cables, preferably with CAT6.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |