Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 13:27:27 EST From: TM4526@aol.com To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 5.3 Network performance tests Message-ID: <82.1aea0101.2ec5090f@aol.com>
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As promised, I've tested the basic network stack for 5.3 -RELEASE The results follow: Hardware: Celeron 1.7Ghz processor Dual onboard Intel NICs, fxp driver Intel 845G chipset 256MB Ram, 120MB allocated to the kernel. Setup: Traffic Generator -> FreeBSD System -> Server The FreeBSD system is set up to route between the traffic generator and the server on the other side. A unidirectional stream of ~34000 UDP packets/second (a full 100Mb/s ethernet load) was sent through the system. The unidirecitonal flow avoids random bus contention of return traffic, and the server was discarding the packets. The routing table was minimal. The test measures raw throughput through a minimal system with a minimal routing table, or more precisely it measures the raw abilty of the kernel to move packets from one interface to another through the normal IP stack. Setup 1: Generic Kernel FreeBSD 4.10: 40% interrupt usage FreeBSD 5.3: 55% interrupt usage Setup 2: The systems were stripped of all hooks, including firewalls, gif and bpf inputs. FreeBSD 4.10: 35% interrupt usage FreeBSD 5.3: 48% interrupt usage Setup 3: We typically use Freebsd with IPFIREWALL and IPDIVERT enabled. The setup had only 1 allow rule in the ruleset: FreeBSD 4.10: 42% interrupt usage FreeBSD 5.3: 58% interrupt usage Given these results, I would conclude that the raw routing stack in 5.3 is 35-40% slower than its 4.x counterpart. The tests are easy enough to duplicate, so there is no reason to question the numbers. Feel free to try it yourself. Obviously different Mobos and CPUs will yield different numbers, but my experience with this test is that the "differences" between the OS versions are linearly similar on different systems. TM
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