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Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:38:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Joe Clarke <marcus@marcuscom.com>
To: Chris Phillips <chris@selkie.org>
Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Router
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0107240923050.262-100000@shell.bchosting.com>
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Usually packet loss starts to occur when buffer space runs short (or I/O
mem on Cisco routers).  How many MBUFs do you have configured?  What does
netstat -m say?  You may want to tune your MBUFs in the kernel.  IF you
have a current CVS of -stable, checkout the tuning(7) manpage.  The thing
to tune would be NMBCLUSTERS.  For my large machines, I set it to 16384.
The default value is 1024, I think.

Joe Clarke

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Chris Phillips wrote:

> Hey,
>
> I always hear people joking about how their 486 would make a great
> router.  I have a P166 w/ 128MB ram and three intel 10/100 NICs running as
> my firewall/router.  During peak times it is starting to have packet
> loss.  At what point is it too much for this kind of hardware?  Does
> anyone have any similar experiences?  Is the packet loss a direct result
> >from lack of processing power?  There is approximately 250 ipfw rules.
>
> [root@gateway1 /root]# w
>  9:26AM  up 414 days, 12:54, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> USER             TTY      FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
> root             p0       penguin          Thu08PM     - w
>
> [root@gateway1 /root]# vmstat
>  procs      memory     page                    disks     faults      cpu
>  r b w     avm   fre  flt  re  pi  po  fr  sr ad0 md0   in   sy  cs us sy
> id
>  0 0 0    3236 79424    1   0   0   0   1   0   0   0  771    7   2  0  7
> 93
>
> Anyone have any other suggestions for the packet loss?
>
> Peak times can be up to 6mbit/s sustained.  This box routes 3 different
> subnets that add up to 256 IPs.  There are two Catalyst 3524s sitting
> behind it.  I'm not sure what other info I should include.
>
> All comments/suggestions are appreciated.  Thanks.
>
> -Chris Phillips
>
> P.S.  Please CC me as I am not on the list.
>
>
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