From owner-freebsd-current Wed Mar 15 16:42: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mass.cdrom.com (mass.cdrom.com [204.216.28.184]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7AD1537B9C8; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:42:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Received: from mass.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA03579; Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:43:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <200003160043.QAA03579@mass.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/15/1999 To: Ian Dowse Cc: Mike Smith , yramin , howardl@account.abs.net, freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best NIC for FBSD (was: Buffer Problems and hangs in 4.0-CURRENT..) In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 15 Mar 2000 23:13:55 GMT." <200003152313.aa85970@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:43:58 -0800 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > In message <200003152053.MAA01346@mass.cdrom.com>, Mike Smith writes: > >> fxp0: The Intel driver is by far the highest preformance model, > >> beats the 3com (second best) hands down with much lower CPU > >> overhead. > > > >Do you actually have any numbers to quantify this? There's nothing in > >the driver architecture nor any of my testing that would suggest this is > >actually the case at this point. > > The FreeBSD fxp driver does a lot to reduce the number of transmit > interrupts; only 1/120 of transmitted packets result in interrupts. See > the code relating to FXP_CXINT_THRESH. > > Assuming an even balance of transmitted and received packets, this should > reduce the total number of interrupts by nearly 50%. I don't know if > drivers for other cards do (or even can) use this approach. This is why I'm asking for real information here; so far all I'm hearing is folklore. The xl driver, for example, does both transmit and receive interrupt coalescing, which should make it superior again, right? 8( -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message