Slow Network Prefomance after updating to Stable ?

[Moti Levy]

Hi ,
I am facing a network issue that is driving me crazy .

I have a few Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers with 1G cards in them .

when running 5.4 release everything is great , i can ping the boxes and 
get replies of less 0.003 seconds  , i small sql test script that 
connect to a server on a second box and gets the following result :


ConnectTime: 0.55301022529602, ConnectCount: 1000, Connect/sec: 
1808.2848277619, AVG connect time: 0.00055301022529602.

QueryTime: 0.31900310516357, QueryCount: 1000, Queue/sec: 
3134.7657242623, AVG query time: 0.00031900310516357.


now , if i upgrade to stable ( p4 , p5 , p6 , p7 )
i get the following pings :

PING srv1 (x.x.x.x): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=12.274 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=4.906 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.680 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.455 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=6.034 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=3.814 ms
64 bytes from x.x.x.x: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.590 ms


the same script from above results in :

ConnectTime: 8.9875299930573, ConnectCount: 1000, Connect/sec: 
111.26527541744, AVG connect time: 0.0089875299930573.

QueryTime: 4.5155739784241, QueryCount: 1000, Queue/sec: 221.4557894031, 
AVG query time: 0.0045155739784241.



i have tried the following :

set te cards on servers to 100mb full-duplex , 1000mb full-duplex and 
same with half-duplex with no success .

than i tried changing the nic ( the 1850's come with em0 ( intel card ) 
so i baught a broadcom card ( bge ) ) same results .

if i downgrade to 5.4-RELEASE all works like a charm .

any idea's ?

thanks
Moti