network perf : em driver ? [solved]

[Patrick Proniewski]

On 13 janv. 2007, at 15:31, R. B. Riddick wrote:

> --- Patrick Proniewski <patpro at patpro.net> wrote:
>> I've connected the em0 port of the freebsd box on a gigabit PCI-X NIC
>> I have in the Mac, and given a second try to the "dd | nc" client/
>> server bench: 103 MB/s. This is far better !
>> Same setup with apache 1.3 on the mac, wget on the Freebsd: about 40
>> MB/s (350 MB file)
>>
> May I see the results of thttpd in comparison to apache (just for  
> the file)?
> :-)

I made a quick&dirty compilation of thttpd on the Mac, and I've got  
about 39 MB/s, so quite the same.

I made further tests, and I've discovered that the real culprit is  
ipfw/natd on the Mac. When I share LAN/Internet access on the Mac  
from eth to airport wifi, ipfw/natd are configured in such a way that  
my eth network crawls. When I've changed NICs (between onboard and  
PCI-X) the internet sharing was still configured to use onboard eth.  
But if I reconfigure the internet sharing on the Mac to use the PCI-X  
NIC, the speed lowers to 21 MB/s instead of 40.
I'll have to find a good wifi card for the freebsd box, so that the  
Mac won't have to be a gateway-behind-the-gateway.


> And I would like to direct ur attention to this thread on freebsd- 
> geom@ (that
> could make ur disk-bottleneck go away; cave: disk bus contention):
> http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20070113004728.GQ2616
> (esp.: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?45A8B722.7020302)


I'll take a look, thanks !

patpro