From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 24 19:33:31 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 32BB816A421 for ; Thu, 24 May 2007 19:33:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from erikt@midgard.homeip.net) Received: from ch-smtp01.sth.basefarm.net (ch-smtp01.sth.basefarm.net [80.76.149.212]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B115213C447 for ; Thu, 24 May 2007 19:33:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from erikt@midgard.homeip.net) Received: from c83-253-10-135.bredband.comhem.se ([83.253.10.135]:63568 helo=falcon.midgard.homeip.net) by ch-smtp01.sth.basefarm.net with smtp (Exim 4.66) (envelope-from ) id 1HrJ3x-0007wZ-5w for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 24 May 2007 21:33:30 +0200 Received: (qmail 50671 invoked from network); 24 May 2007 21:33:27 +0200 Received: from owl.midgard.homeip.net (10.1.5.7) by falcon.midgard.homeip.net with SMTP; 24 May 2007 21:33:27 +0200 Received: (qmail 58769 invoked by uid 1001); 24 May 2007 21:33:27 +0200 Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 21:33:27 +0200 From: Erik Trulsson To: Andrew Falanga Message-ID: <20070524193327.GA58657@owl.midgard.homeip.net> Mail-Followup-To: Andrew Falanga , freebsd-questions References: <340a29540705241210qa6895bem9d4aa1a5d2dd05a0@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <340a29540705241210qa6895bem9d4aa1a5d2dd05a0@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.14 (2007-02-12) X-Originating-IP: 83.253.10.135 X-ACL-Warn: Too high rate of unknown addresses received from you X-Scan-Result: No virus found in message 1HrJ3x-0007wZ-5w. X-Scan-Signature: ch-smtp01.sth.basefarm.net 1HrJ3x-0007wZ-5w ffbad1f4552b12ca06bb92054e5caea0 Cc: freebsd-questions Subject: Re: How does FreeBSD handle tcp checksum offloading X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 19:33:31 -0000 On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 01:10:55PM -0600, Andrew Falanga wrote: > Hi, > > I'm curious as to how FreeBSD handles checksum offloading for TCP > packets. Is this on by default? It seems that it's only relevant for > specific drivers rather than something that's just assumed. How can I > determine if this is supported for the hardware I'm running? Is it > common for tcp checksum offloading to be in the fxp driver? Can one > turn it off (though, it honestly sounds like no one would wish to do > so)? Checksum offloading is usually enabled by default for hardware that supports it (assuming that the driver for that hardware also supports it of course.) To see if a particular interface uses checksum offloading you can look at the output of 'ifconfig -m'. The "options" line in the output refers to those features that are enabled, while the "capabilities" line refers to those features that are available. (Checksum offloading for receive and transmit show up as RXCSUM and TXCSUM respectively.) Ifconfig can also be used to enable/disable the offloading - see the ifconfig(8) manpage for details and syntax. It can sometimes be desirable to turn of checksum offloading if one suspects that the hardware has some bugs in it that can cause the checksum to be wrong. (For those cases were the hardware has known bugs in this area, the driver normally disable checksum offloading by default.) Most hardware supported by the fxp(4) driver do not have support for checksum offloading, but some do. (The fairly commonly used 82559 chip does not support checksum while the less common 82550 chip does, for example.) -- Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se