From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 9 07:31:07 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13A4E37B401 for ; Fri, 9 May 2003 07:31:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from server2.stileproject.com (server2-a.dragondata.com [64.202.112.25]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9BACE43F3F for ; Fri, 9 May 2003 07:31:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from toasty@dragondata.com) Received: from KEVIN-AW.dragondata.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) h44JKeZ8059412 for ; Sun, 4 May 2003 14:20:40 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from toasty@dragondata.com) Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030504141435.0385ed58@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: toasty@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 14:19:34 -0500 To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org From: Kevin Day Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new Subject: polling(4) and idle time/cpu usage percentages X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 14:31:07 -0000 I've got a FreeBSD system acting as a router, it's passing 250-600mbps of traffic through it most of the time. Yesterday it was running 4.6-RELEASE without polling. I've upgraded it to 4.8 and enabled polling. Before it was showing 30-50% CPU use in interrupt and system combined. Now it's showing 0-1% (99% idle). Is this because it's polling in the idle loop, and time spent doing this isn't getting accounted for anywhere, or is polling THAT much more efficient? If it's the former, is it supposed to work this way? Now I've got no clear way of knowing how busy the system is. (It's just routing packets, really nothing more) -- Kevin