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Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 1996 10:41:57 -0500
From:      dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
To:        Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc:        tjeffers@nastg.gsfc.nasa.gov, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Freebsd Vs. Linux
Message-ID:  <199604041541.KAA08041@etinc.com>

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>> >> We are in the midst of a development project which uses alot of UDP
>> >> and serial communications.
>> >> 
>> >> Although our preference had been to use FreeBSD, the UDP
>> >> performance was terrible (200 Kbps over Ethernet), and we
>> >> kept getting ENOBUF errors  which  makes FreeBSD an unacceptable choice.
>> >> Our previous posts for possible parameters to tune didn't
>> >> turn up anything helpful, and messages to freebsd.org haven't been
>> >> answered yet.
>> >> 
>> >> The TCP performance was the same for both Linux and FreeBSD, and UDP
>> >> testing on all other platforms in our facility proved okay for Solaris,
>> >> SunOS, & SCO.
>> >> 
>> >> Is there anything we can do to improve the UDP performance of FreeBSD?
>> >> Why does it care about buffering for UDP?  Please respond via email
>> >> to tjeffers@nastg.gsfc.nasa.gov.  Thanks.
>
>I think this was answered already by one of the networking guru's, but
>in case you missed it...
>
>You can increase the buffer space to get rid of the ENOBUF errors, but
>they are really "backoff and retransmit warnings".  The other OS's you
>tested are probably silenty dropping the packets. 

or queueing endlessly . There are good reasons to limit queue space, and
if you overflow this with a non-realistic test then you havent learned very 
little. These can be tuned, I believe, as well. I think IFQ_MAXLEN is 50,
 which is really too small for an ethernet link (note that I think it is 300
in LINUX),
 particularly if the traffic is largely small packets that are being
pummelled onto
 the line. You may try tuning this value (in /usr/src/sys/net/if.h) and see
what happens.

Dennis
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