polling(4) and Gigabit

[Luigi Rizzo]

On Sun, May 18, 2003 at 09:53:26AM +0200, Tony Sarendal wrote:
> 
>  From what I can see nge is the only polling driver for
> Gig NICs, looking at 4.8. Has anyone done any performance

actually that would be 'em'

> tests on this ? I'm interested in knowing what can of
> bandwidth/pps one actually can achieve on a PC router.

it depends on a lot of factors including the size of the routing
table, the firewall ruleset complexity, the bus speed, the CPU
speed, the packet sizes.

With a fast enough box (2.4GHz) i reached some 650-700kpps through
a FreeBSD box running 4.7 and configured as a bridge, similar
thing with a router and fastforwarding. If you use the firewall, you
could get down to some 400-500kpps at best. This is with 64-byte
packets. In terms of bandwidth, with large enough frames (i'd
say 500+ bytes) you should have no trouble running close
to wire speed (again, depending on the above factors).

> If the NIC now is the limitation(?), how much OS resources
> do I have left after the NIC is running at 100% ?

the NIC is not always the limitation, you can run out of
steam on many parts of the system.

	cheers
	luigi

> I'm looking at building a new network, using pc routers
> for some of the bgp stuff can save quit a lot of money.
> 
> /Tony S
> 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-net at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-net-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"