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Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 17:50:20 +0200
From: Andre Oppermann <andre@freebsd.org>
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To: David Gilbert <dgilbert@dclg.ca>
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Subject: Re: Packet passing performance study on exotic hardware.
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David Gilbert wrote:
> During the next week, I will continue testing with full simulated
> routing tables, random packets and packets between 350 and 550 bytes
> (average ISP out/in packet sizes).  I will add to this report then.
> If anyone has tuning advice for FreeBSD 5.3, I'd like to hear it.

Three things:

  sysctl net.inet.ip.fastforwarding=1

  Don't use SMP for packet forwarding.  It doesn't help anything and
  introduces only locking overhead.

  Upgrade to the latest RELENG_5, there are a couple of fixes for things
  that may hurt you here.  Especially there is a fix for the transmit
  queues on the em() driver.

-- 
Andre