[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       openbsd-pf
Subject:    Re: What NICs for lowest interupt load with pf
From:       Stuart Henderson <stu () spacehopper ! org>
Date:       2007-10-19 13:20:18
Message-ID: 20071019132018.GA706 () zephyr ! spacehopper ! org
[Download RAW message or body]

On 2007/10/19 12:26, Russell Fulton wrote:
> It has become very clear now that one of the significant bottlenecks is
> interrupt handling in the kernel.

I am pretty sure that PF's cpu use is counted in interrupt%.

Are you aware of the ruleset optimizer in pfctl? It reorders the
ruleset to take advantage of skip steps while keeping the same meaning.
Before 4.2, it had to be enabled manually (with the -o flag to pfctl);
now it's turned on by default and can be enabled/disabled from pf.conf.

This is apart from the various other improvements to PF and the network
stack (which still help when the ruleset is optimal), these have had very
positive feedback:

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=119257298926670&w=2

Some benchmarks on Sun X4100 have also been posted recently, seeing
c.500kpps without packet loss:

http://www.layer17.net/openbsd-router-intro.html
http://www.layer17.net/openbsd-test-rfc2544-throughput-latency.html

> We are using IBM X series hardware that have Intel NICs (em) on the
> motherboard ( and 64bit PCIX bus).  We also have some NIC cards that use
> Broadcom chipsets (bge).

em(4) sk(4) and most bge(4) have been fine for me, but I've had problems
with dropped frames on "Broadcom BCM5704C" rev 0x10, BCM5704 B0 (0x2100)
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]