From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 15 18:25:41 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DFEE716A479 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:25:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from pm940@yahoo.com) Received: from web54009.mail.yahoo.com (web54009.mail.yahoo.com [206.190.36.233]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5927D43D45 for ; Thu, 15 Jun 2006 18:25:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pm940@yahoo.com) Received: (qmail 43539 invoked by uid 60001); 15 Jun 2006 18:25:40 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=KC0IuoVLgKe7rtOh+dDpCECwXhNyR2NnV376ty00I6fjePP63Hnz9BLgf7avybU8ubxPVTXq2eNtQoOA0pXmLI5hm4d4q8ITe+NTWOUIor3KTf6hxGQbADNzSCJd07S60XOe5NIHav4HEQrYtQs3wwCikUlTU3rQcVOoVuYgXQo= ; Message-ID: <20060615182540.43537.qmail@web54009.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [71.140.186.33] by web54009.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:25:40 PDT Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:25:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Paul Marciano To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: fxp driver performance expectations 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, 15 Jun 2006 18:25:42 -0000 Hello. I am running FreeBSD-5.4 on a 3GHz P4 with two Intel fxp NICs running IP forwarding with polling enabled. For larger packets (e.g. 700 bytes) I am getting 100Mbps throughput port to port. For min-size packets (64 bytes) I am only seeing around 60Mbps. Increasing HZ and the polling parameters does not help. I tried a couple of Gigabit Ethernet cards, using the em driver and they can sustain 100Mbps. For further comparison I tried a recent Linux install and got a little over 20Mbps for 64 byte packets. So much for that. Does anyone know if I should be expecting more performance out of the fxp? Again, the em NICs work beyond 100Mbps with min sized frames. I want to know if there's more performance to be had from the hardware. My working assumption is that the driver is mature, it's a popular NIC, so maybe I'm getting all there is out of it. However, if the driver has been written optimized for larger packets at the expense of smaller packets, then perhaps there's work I can do. The goal, by the way, is to forward min-sized frames at line rate. It's a dumb goal, but one that marketing people care about. I clearly have no clue here, so please feel free to give me one. Thanks, Paul. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com