Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 23:38:29 -0600 (CST) From: Kyle Mestery <mestery@winternet.com> To: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Call for testers for RealTek 8139 driver Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.9812052325030.23962-100000@tundra.winternet.com> In-Reply-To: <199812051822.NAA16071@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
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Hi, On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Bill Paul wrote: > Well, bear in mind that when I test, I typically just use ttcp to > source and receive data; this is not the same as using FTP, because > FTP also reads/writes files, which produes extra activity on the system > due to the disk controller. So you end up measuring the performance of > the NIC and the disks, which is not what you want. > Okay, understandable. > Try this: go to ftp.sgi.com:/src/sgi/ttcp and get the file called > ttcp.c. Compile it with cc -O -o ttcp ttcp.c (you'll probably get a > few compilation warnings, but that's okay). Place a copy on both > machines. > > On one host, do: > > % ttcp -r > /dev/null > > On the other, do: > > % ttcp -s -n1000 -t <IP address of other host> > > The -s flag means 'source data' and the -t means 'transmit.' This > will cause the one machine to send about 8MB of data back to the > first one. When it's done, you should see statistics printed on > both sides, including the transfer speed. This will let you generate > traffic without also generating disk activity, which will affect > the measurements. You can also swap the commands so that the second > host becomes the receiver and the first becomes the transmitter. > You can also do both at once. You can also increase the number of > blocks from 1000 to 10000 or more to increase the duration of the > test. > Okay, I got ttcp and tried using it for performance. What I see now is much more respectable I think. Between the two machines I am seeing about 5-6MB/s. I also have a 3COM 905B in the dual Pentium machine, and using that the rates increase to between 7-8MB/s. So, for now I am using the 905B on that machine at 100Mb/s, and I'll use the Realtek card at 10Mb/s, which it should be fine at. > I have a single-CPU Pentium 200 machine with 64MB of RAM that I've > also been using for testing recently; on this machine, using a > driver that does buffer copies, transmit performance is usually > somewhere around 8MB/sec. The PII400 is usually much faster than > this, possibly because it can simply do bcopy()s much faster. > This would seem to be true. > By contrast, when I tested the Macronix driver (which does not > require buffer copies) on the same P200 machine, I was able to > get around 10.5MB/sec transmit speed. > > There are a couple of things you might try: > > 1) The PII 400Mhz machine I have is a Dell PowerEdge 2300/400 with > two CPUs. I have noticed that a UP kernel has better transmit > speed than an SMP kernel on the same hardware (using the same > driver source). I'm not suggesting that you abandon SMP, but > it would be interesting to see what happens if you use a UP > kernel on these machines, just to see if it makes a difference. > The UP kernel did give me faster transfer rates for some reason, about 1MB/s better I noticed. I am going to try a UP kernel on my PPro machine tonite and see if that one is affected as well. > 2) The Dell machine has something like 6 PCI slots. If you look at > the diagram plastered to the inside of the cover panel, it says > that the first four are 'primary' slots, and the last two, which > are mixed in among the ISA slots, are 'secondary.' I discovered > one day that if I plug a card into one of these secondary slots, > it works, but performance is terrible: a card that could transmit > at 10MB/sec would suddenly only produce 3MB/sec tops. Moving the > card back to one of the first four slots cured the problem. > > I don't know where you have your cards plugged in, but you might > want to try shuffling them to different slots. > On the dual PPro machine, the Realtek card is in a PCI slot, not a shared slot. On the daul Pentium machine, the Realtek card is in a shared slot, but the 3Com 905B is in a PCI only slot. I didn't try moving the Pentium's Realtek card, since I am now going to use the 3Com at 100Mb/s. I think I may swap it with the video card, however, and see if it does give me improved performance. Thanks for the help, I am going to continue to try and see if I can make these cards perform a little better. -- Kyle Mestery StorageTek's Storage Networking Group To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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