Re: 2.6.12 Performance problems

From: Ben Greear
Date: Thu Aug 25 2005 - 01:35:31 EST


Danial Thom wrote:

--- Ben Greear <greearb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Danial Thom wrote:


I think the concensus is that 2.6 has made

trade

offs that lower raw throughput, which is what

a

networking device needs. So as a router or
network appliance, 2.6 seems less suitable. A

raw

bridging test on a 2.0Ghz operton system:

FreeBSD 4.9: Drops no packets at 900K pps
Linux 2.4.24: Starts dropping packets at 350K

pps

Linux 2.6.12: Starts dropping packets at 100K

pps

I ran some quick tests using kernel 2.6.11, 1ms
tick (HZ=1000), SMP kernel.
Hardware is P-IV 3.0Ghz + HT on a new
SuperMicro motherboard with 64/133Mhz
PCI-X bus. NIC is dual Intel pro/1000. Kernel
is close to stock 2.6.11.

I used brctl to create a bridge with the two
GigE adapters in it and
used pktgen to stream traffic through it
(250kpps in one direction, 1kpps in
the other.)

I see a reasonable amount of drops at 250kpps
(60 byte packets):
about 60,000,000 packets received, 20,700
dropped.

I get slightly worse performance on this system when running RH9
with kernel 2.4.29 (my hacks, HZ=1000, SMP). Tried increasing
e1000 descriptors to 2048 tx and rx, but that didn't help, or at least
not much.

Will try some other tunings, but I doubt it will affect performance
enough to come close to the discrepency that you show between 2.4
and 2.6 kernels...

I tried copying a 500MB CDROM to HD on my RH9 system, and only 6kpps
of the 250kpps get through the bridge...btw.

Ben

--
Ben Greear <greearb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com

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