nfe driver 6.2 stable

[Pyun YongHyeon]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2007 at 07:05:35PM +0100, Chris wrote:
 > On 28/09/2007, Pyun YongHyeon <pyunyh at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 06:30:20PM +0100, Chris wrote:
 > >  > On 27/09/2007, Pyun YongHyeon <pyunyh at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >  > > On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 04:44:09PM +0100, Chris wrote:
 > >
 > > [...]
 > >  > >
 > >  > >  > The card is more stable when using nve driver no crashes still but the
 > >  > >  > performance is around the same maxing out at around 200mbit.  I was
 > >  > >  > expecting nearer 400-500mbit.
 > >  > >  >
 > >  > >  > e1000phy0: <Marvell 88E1116 Gigabit PHY> on miibus0
 > >  > >  >
 > >  > >
 > >  > > There had been issues nfe(4) with 88E1116/88E1149 PHYs but your issue
 > >  > > seems to be different one. How about manually set media configuration?
 > >  > > For example, "ifconfig nfe0 media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex"
 > >  > >
 > >
 > > [...]
 > >
 > >  >
 > >  > I typod I meant to say nve was unstable and nfe has been rock solid so
 > >  > great work with the driver.  I enabled mpsafe now and still no
 > >  > problems and its gave me a little more performance as well, a shame my
 > >  > nic has no hardware features (unusual for a gigabit nic) but overall
 > >  > glad its at least stable.
 > >  >
 > >
 > > How did you check network performance?
 > > Maxing out at around 200Mbps seems weird. Personally, I had never seen
 > > GigE hardwares that saturate at 200Mbps. One of causes I can think of
 > > is speed/duplex mismatches with link partner. Manually setting
 > > speed/duplex might fix your performance issue, I guess.
 > >
 > > --
 > > Regards,
 > > Pyun YongHyeon
 > >
 > 
 > These are ftp transfers it is running on a amd62 x2 dual core
 > processor and gig of ram, when at max speed cpu usage is very high in
 > excess of 80% but not completely maxed out.  It now seems to be able
 > to sustain around 30meg/sec the highest I have seen I havent done any
 > other testing so if you have a better way it would be good to know

ftp transfers involve disk activities so you're not measuring NIC
performance. Try one of benchmark programs in ports/benchmarks
(e.g. netperf, iperf, ttcp etc).
ATM nfe(4)'s interrupt moderation mechanism doesn't seem to work
at all so nfe(4) generates too many interrupts. However I don't
think it wouldn't be major bottleneck of the performance.

 > thanks.  Please bare in mind I have no local access to the server so
 > crashing it eg. is expensive for as will have to pay for a kvm switch
 > netstat -i indicates no collisions for a duplex mismatch so not keen
 > on trying a manual negotiotian again for reasons above.  So even for a
 > card with no hardware features you would expect it to exceed 200mbit
 > easily?
 > 

Yes. You have a gigabit ethernet controller and fast CPU.
Run one of benchmark programs and get a number.

 > I havent enabled net isr setting I wonder if that will help.
 > 

That wouldn't help a lot, I guess.

 > Chris

-- 
Regards,
Pyun YongHyeon