network slowness/freez-up since update 10/11

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Ian FREISLICH wrote:

> I have a
> 
> de0: <Digital 21041 Ethernet> port 0xe800-0xe87f mem 0xea001000-0xea00107f irq 17 at device 9.0 on pci0
> de0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
> de0: DEC DE450-CA 21041 [10Mb/s] pass 1.1
> de0: Ethernet address: 00:00:f8:30:dd:c2
> de0: if_start running deferred for Giant
> 
> that is no longer in use.  If it will be of help, I'll mail it to you
> (you'll need to give me your shipping address). 

I actually have an if_de card on my desk, thanks to Mark Murray who
dropped it off a couple of days ago, but no computer to put it in.  I just
moved to Cambridge, UK from Washington, DC, and have only notebooks with
me.  As far as I know, no pccard form factor if_de cards were ever made,
although I'm willing to be corrected on that point, and accept one
willingly :-).  I'm doing most testing on a remotely administered test
cluster, so maybe the answer is to get it shipped there to put in a box.

I'm beginning to wonder if the race isn't that the if_de interrupt thread
runs between the point where a packet is queued for the interface and the
if_start runs out of a task queue.  I'm still making may way through the
if_de driver to understand how it all fits together, however. 

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research