Performance problem using Intel X520-DA2

[Nikolay Denev]

On Jan 23, 2012, at 11:39 PM, Marcin Markowski wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> This message has been sent to freebsd-performance@ but got
> the information that should contact also with freebsd-net at .
> 
> We use FreeBSD as sniffer (libpcap programs) and we experience
> performance problems when incoming traffic is greater than 7.5Gbps/s.
> If we check 'top' we see that first irq from network card is using
> 100% CPU. I've tested this on FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE and 9.0-RELEASE
> (on 9.0 we can see also kernel thread named {ix0 que} using 100% CPU),
> and both systems behave the same. In logs we see also:
> interrupt storm detected on "irq268:"; throttling interrupt source
> 
> Our server platform is Intel SR2600URBRP, 2x Xeon X5650, 6GB RAM and
> NIC Intel X520-DA2.
> 
> I'm not sure if problem is with NIC or motherboard in SR2600URBRP,
> because everything is fine when we use other server configuration:
> Intel SR1630GP, 1x Xeon X3450, 8GB RAM, NIC X520-DA2
> 
> My /boot/loader.conf:
> kern.ipc.nmbclusters=262144
> hw.ixgbe.rxd=2048
> hw.ixgbe.txd=2048
> hw.ixgbe.num_queues=16
> 
> /etc/sysctl.conf
> hw.intr_storm_threshold=10000
> 
> -- 
> Marcin Markowski


Hi,

Maybe you want to take a loot at NETMAP : http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/
There is a libpcap wrapper library, so you can use it with unchanged pcap consumers,
and get great performance increase.
I'm not sure that the patches are updated for 8 and 9 though, since the initial commit to HEAD
there were several related changes.

P.S.: It is important also what is you packet rate, since 7.5Gbps with jumbo packets or 64 byte packets
are very different things :)

Regards,
Nikolay