FreeBSD boxes as a 'router'...

[Outback Dingo]

you can also use luigis netmap with certain cards and a patched
open-vswitch if its purely a routing platform to potentially increase
performance, we are currently working on a prototype in our lab to replace
an older cisco


On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:57 PM, <khatfield at socllc.net> wrote:

> One thing I have noticed is mixed results with polling depending on the
> version.
>
> My experience with similar NICs was that polling increased the PPS
> capabilities up to 7.4 but post 7.4 we have seen most cases where polling
> caused either connectivity issues or decreased overall performance.
>
> Now we were running full 1Gbps in our tests. With only 140Mbps you should
> be able to handle this amount without polling or additional kernel tweaks.
> Specifically with 9 - I would recommend doing needed sysctl tweaks without
> polling and as long as you are not receiving DDoS traffic then it should
> prove perfectly stable.
>
>
>
> On Nov 20, 2012, at 11:46 AM, "Victor Balada Diaz" <victor at bsdes.net>
> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 03:35:13PM +0000, John Fretby wrote:
> >> Howdy all,
> >>
> >> We've currently got an ageing HP DL360 running as a 'router' - it has
> >> 100Mbit in/out onto our network, and has two 'bce' NIC's providing
> in/out.
> >> It's running quite an old version of FreeBSD (6 I think) - but works.
> >>
> >> As the network gets busier we've noticed the amount of interrupt time
> on it
> >> is climbing (as you'd expect - i.e. esp. if many small packets are being
> >> forwarded). Many moons ago we did experiment with this box - and enabled
> >> device polling (inc. upping the HZ on the box and recompiling the kernel
> >> etc). This didn't work very well at the time (probably because it was in
> >> it's infancy) so we left it off in the end.
> >>
> >> If we were to replace this box, with something new - say a SuperMicro
> based
> >> system with two:
> >>
> >>   Intel 82574L's (em Driver Based)
> >>
> >> And enable polling - is it likely to "just work" these days? The current
> >> upstream is 100Mbit, we're looking to upgrade this to 1Gbit in, but with
> >> say 200Mbit comitted on it (so shouldn't go above 200Mbit).
> >>
> >> Is there anything that has to be done to enable polling - other than
> >> recompiling GENERIC to support it? - i.e. no HZ hacks or anything
> needed on
> >> 'modern' machines (it's a quad core Xeon).
> >
> > Hello John,
> >
> > You might find interesting to read this thread:
> >
> >
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-November/037590.html
> >
> > In short: device polling can decrease performance on modern hardware.
> >
> > You might want to try upgrading to a new FreeBSD version and tuning it
> somehow
> > before buying a new server. More info on tuning the network stack:
> >
> > http://wiki.freebsd.org/NetworkPerformanceTuning
> >
> > Regards.
> > Victor.
> > --
> > La prueba más fehaciente de que existe vida inteligente en otros
> > planetas, es que no han intentado contactar con nosotros.
> > _______________________________________________
> > freebsd-isp at freebsd.org mailing list
> > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-isp
> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-isp-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-isp at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-isp
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-isp-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>