Packet Loss w/bge & BCM5703 on Dell PE2650

[Vinny Abello]

Vinny Abello wrote:
> Sten Daniel Soersdal wrote:
>> Vinny Abello wrote:
>>> Oliver Fromme wrote:
>>>> Vinny Abello wrote:
>>>>  >         I've isolated a problem which appears to be a bug causing
>>>> packet loss
>>>>  > with FreeBSD 6.0 and later on the Dell PowerEdge 2650 servers and the
>>>>  > integrated Broadcom BCM5703 NICs.
>>>>
>>>> Have you enabled polling on the interface?
>>>>
>>>> I experienced a similar problem on a HP Proliant DL360
>>>> running 6.2-stable (RELENG_6 of a few weeks ago).
>>>> The problem disappeared upon "ifconfig bge0 polling".
>>>>
>>>> Best regards
>>>>    Oliver
>>> It appears I do not have the DEVICE_POLLING option set when I compiled
>>> my kernel on my one machine and on the second I am just using the
>>> GENERIC kernel. I'll recompile with this option set and try again and
>>> post my results to the list.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>> Try disabling hardware assisted checksumming. ( ifconfig bge0 -txcsum
>> -rxcsum ).
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion, but...
> 
> That's actually one of the first things I tried before writing to the
> list. No difference.
> 
> I'm going to put an Intel Pro/100 card in shortly to see if the problem
> goes away to be certain the issue is definitely with the integrated
> Broadcom NICs.

I've installed an Intel Pro/100 adapter in the Dell PowerEdge 2650. This
is an Intel 82550 chipset. The packet loss problem is completely gone
when using this NIC in the server, so it is definitely related to the
bge driver and this chipset BCM5703 or something else in the server. I'm
going to try and isolate which major release this problem appeared.
Maybe this will help isolate the change that is causing this issue for me.

-- 

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
vinny at tellurian.com
(973)940-6100
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