Network performance tuning for large objects

[Pranav A. Desai]

Hi!

   We are running a proxy server on freeBSD 4.6.2 and one of our customer
requirements is that the users will be accessing ~500k files. During
testing the max req/sec the proxy server can sustain without the
user robots complaining is about 200 req/s, as the number of req. go up,
connection errors appear on the client side. I followed the kernel tuning
section in the handbook and increased the nmbufs and cluster to

kern.ipc.nmbclusters: 65536
kern.ipc.nmbufs: 65536

But even then the errors appear.

I read about these parameters

net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 65536
net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 57344

but I dont know if I should increase these and the above one, because I
read it might cause boot time crash.

Also, if the testing is done with normal sized objects, then the proxy is
easily able to sustain more than 1200 req/s.

The network card is Intel 100Mb/s.

I would appreciate if anyone can suggest some tuning tips.

Thanks you for your time.

-Pranav


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Pranav A. Desai