Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 23:31:45 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> Cc: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD as a router Message-ID: <37006FD1.45A2865A@softweyr.com> References: <14079.61724.162248.667212@avalon.east> <199903292322.XAA11026@inner.net> <199903300122.UAA14792@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
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Garrett Wollman wrote:
>
> <<On Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:27:03 -0500, Craig Metz <cmetz@inner.net> said:
>
> > I'd love to see well-done test data to substantiate or refute this sort of
> > discussion; people know what the good and bad properties of the hardware and
> > the software are and can take reasonably good guesses, but they're still just
> > guesses and not measured performance numbers. I know that there is data out
> > there, but I don't know how good it is.
>
> I actually did something like this a few years back. The tests we
> were running were flat-out packet generation (because we needed to
> know how fast we could send packets before we attempted to receive or
> forward them). At that time, the fastest machine we had in the
> hardware lab was a 200-MHz Pentium Pro with the Natoma chipset; with
> the best hardware/driver combination (Intel 82557), we were able to
> transmit at line rate at packet sizes down to about 80 bytes (excuse
> me, octets) before the machine ran out of gas. With better chipsets
> and faster memory subsystems, there should be plenty of headroom to
> forward packets at line rate, particularly if you're doing VJ-style
> fast forwarding. (Whether that leaves enough CPU to run a routing
> protocol as well I can't say.)
If somebody wants to write up some sketchy details as to what I should
configure, I can do a couple of quick tests later this week. I have
a PII-233 machine with 64MB RAM, one onboard EEPro100, and two 3C905B
on PCI cards. I also have access to a SmartBits traffic generator that
can do 2 or 3 full-duplex 100Base-TX streams without breaking a sweat,
and gives really reliable numbers.
If other network interfaces would be better, let me know and I'll see
if I can scare up a couple of them. Another EEPro100 shouldn't be
a problem to borrow, for instance.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.softweyr.com/~softweyr wes@softweyr.com
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