On Thursday 09 June 2005 17:25, nate wrote:
> Hello --
>
> I am testing out a couple of new firewalls running
> openbsd 3.6 (plan to upgrade to 3.7 soon), I did
> some searches to see what kind of performance I
> can expect and didn't come up with much other
> than one posting where a guy got more than
> 800Mbit of throughput.
>
> Currently I am testing with pf disabled, just
> bridging the traffic to take pf out of the
> picture.
>
> Without bridging the traffic I get about ~700Mbit
> of throughput. When I bridge the traffic it peaks
> at ~500Mbit(as measured by iperf between 2 linux
> hosts)
>
>
> CPU spends approx 20-40% servicing interrupts
> according to top.
>
> I was expecting similarly good results(at least
> closer to wire speed) as the poster who got
> 800Mbit+ of throughput as my hardware is approx
> twice as fast as his(he had a 1.8Ghz Xeon)
>
>
> system specs:
> Supermicro 6034HX8R Motherboard
> Intel Xeon EM64T 3.4Ghz 1MB Cache(1 CPU)
> 2GB PC3200 Registered ECC DDR-II Memory
> ICP Vortex SCSI Raid card with 128MB Cache
> - 4 x 36GB U320 10k RPM SCSI disks in raid 10
>
> Dual onboard Intel GigE network cards(em driver)
> Dual port PCI-X Intel GigE network card(em driver)
> Quad port PCI-X Intel GigE network card(em driver)
>
>
> I have both interfaces on the dual port PCI
> card bridged, and both pairs of interfaces
> on the quad port bridged. Performance does
> not vary between the dual port PCI-X and the
> quad port PCI-X.
>
> I was hoping with the dual and quad port
> cards that it would reduce interrupt hits
> if both ends of the bridge are on the same
> card. I haven't tried crossing the bridge
> between the two cards yet.
>
> while this performance is acceptable, I was
> hoping for some tips on getting it closer to
> wire speed, or reducing interrupt usage.
>
> Since I don't seem to be CPU bound(~70% idle)
> perhaps it is network driver related? Is there
> a better driver to use? Or a better network
> card?
>
When it comes to network performance most plattforms have limitations in
packets per second before bandwidth. Please post the performance in pps also,
as that is more interesting and more relevant, especially in the GigE case.
The fastest pc os around according to google is FreeBSD which has broken the
1Mpps limit on pc hardware (2.8 GHz Xeon), but that is not wirespeed.
If you expect to see wire speed your box has to handle 1.5Mpps, for just one
direction GigE. What kind of pps numbers are you seeing ?
Tony
--
---
Tony Sarendal - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
IP/Unix
-= The scorpion replied,
"I couldn't help it, it's my nature" =-
