From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Apr 22 15:27:16 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64F5E1065672 for ; Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:27:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from prt@prt.org) Received: from smtp5.uk.umis.net (smtp5.uk.umis.net [217.65.166.40]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 30DAA8FC0A for ; Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:27:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from www1.prt.org ([217.65.161.4] helo=emma.prt.org) by smtp5.uk.umis.net with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1O4xpP-0003Zh-3H for freebsd-net@freebsd.org; Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:56:31 +0000 Message-ID: <4BD0639E.1020004@prt.org> Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:56:30 +0000 From: Paul Thornton User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080419) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Current best version for router use X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:27:16 -0000 Hi list, A bit of advice please, folks. We currently use 6.2-release + Quagga as a router on a number of boxes. These are stable but we have seen some CPU issues recently and clearly the code is all getting old now, and so I'm starting to look at updating them. Specifically, the hardware consists of a single dual-core Xeon at 2GHz with 2G RAM, containing 10x em interfaces (2x quad PCI-X cards, plus 2 onboard) . IRQ sharing is a bit of an issue and only 8 of those 1G ports can be used without re-using an interrupt. They run with polling enabled, with kern.polling.user_frac = 22 These routers run Quagga 0.99.7 doing v4 and v6 OSPF/BGP. We do use a number of vlans and a couple of gif tunnels. Total throughput varies quite a lot - from 50M to about 200M - but usually isn't high. There seem to be a lot of issues that have appeared around 8.0 and the em code, and although patches have quickly appeared, I know that a lot of the forwarding and routing code in 8 is new - so whilst I would normally have just tested this with 8 and not considered anything else, I am thinking that maybe sticking with 7 is a better plan. I'd appreciate any input from anyone who is using 8.0 in a similar environment, any advice and suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks, Paul.