Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 5 Nov 2011 11:03:50 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Rick Macklem <rmacklem@uoguelph.ca>
To:        bevan@bi-co.net
Cc:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Gigabit Ethernet performance with Realtek 8111E
Message-ID:  <1893638131.1215459.1320505430915.JavaMail.root@erie.cs.uoguelph.ca>
In-Reply-To: <1320494003.19667.41.camel@bevan-pc.fritz.box>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
bevan wrote:
> Hi!
>=20
> I've got a small NAS with Intel D525MW (Atom) board inside using
> FreeBSD
> 9.0-RC1 as operating system. It has an onboard Realtek 8111E ethernet
> adapter. I'm experiencing heavy performance problems when transfering
> files from a specific PC in my network to that NAS. I did the
> following
> tests by transfering large amount of data between the diferrent
> machines
> (using dd and nc):
>=20
> NAS -> Linux1: ~ 400Mbit/s
> NAS -> Linux2: ~ 400Mbit/s
> Linux1 -> NAS: heavy fluctuation, between 700Mbit/s and 0bit/s
> Linux2 -> NAS: ~ 400Mbit/s
> Linux1 -> Linux2: ~ 400Mbit/s
> Linux2 -> Linux1: ~ 400Mbit/s
>=20
> As you can see everythink works fine except for transfering data from
> Linux1 to that NAS box. The following graph shows the problem:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25455527/network-problems.png
>=20
> While the transfer rate drops to zero the NAS also has a very bad ping
> up to one second. Ping of Linux1 is perfectly fine during these
> outages.
>=20
> I also had a quick look on the data stream with wireshark on Linux1
> and
> it shows a lot of TCP Dup ACK (up to 263 Dup ACKs created by NAS for
> one
> frame).
>=20
> What can be eliminated as a cause is:
> - Switch (I tried connecting Linux1 and NAS directly)
> - Cable (I changed that a few times)
> - Harddisk I/O (I'm only writing from /dev/zero to /dev/null)
>=20
> The sevirity of that problem varies from one minute to another but can
> always be reproduced with a few tries.
>=20
> When limiting either NAS or Linux1 to 100Mbit I'm getting a steady
> transfer rate of about 90Mbit/s.
> When decreasing the MTU on NAS to 1200 the problem seems to disappear,
> getting a transfer rate of about 160Mbit/s.
>=20
> ifconfig re0:
> > re0: flags=3D8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
> > 1500
> > =09options=3D388b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_UCAST,WOL_MCAS=
T,WOL_MAGIC>
> > =09ether 38:60:77:3e:af:a5
> > =09inet 192.168.178.54 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.178.255
> > =09nd6 options=3D29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
> > =09media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
> > =09status: active
>=20
try typing:
# sysctl dev.re.0.stats=3D1
- this will dump out the stats on the chip
  if the "Rx missed frames" count is non-zero, you're probably snookered,
  to put it technically:-)
  - That's what I get for a re chip is this laptop and I haven't found
    a way around it. I just live with flakey net performance.

rick

> pciconf -lv:
> > re0@pci0:1:0:0: class=3D0x020000 card=3D0xd6258086 chip=3D0x816810ec
> > rev=3D0x06 hdr=3D0x00
> >     vendor =3D 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
> >     device =3D 'RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller'
> >     class =3D network
> >     subclass =3D ethernet
>=20
> Because Linux1 seems to be involved in that problem: It's running
> Linux
> 3.0 and it has an "Atheros Communications AR8121/AR8113/AR8114"
> onboard.
>=20
> Does anyone have an idea what could be the problem here? Decreasing
> the
> MTU is some kind of solution but the performance is still not optimal
> and a MTU of 1500 should be no problem.
>=20
> Greetings,
> Michael La=C3=9F
>=20
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-net@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-net-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?1893638131.1215459.1320505430915.JavaMail.root>