From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jul 24 14:13:44 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (mail.wolves.k12.mo.us [207.160.214.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9296737B403 for ; Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:13:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us) Received: from mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (cdillon@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us [207.160.214.1]) by mail.wolves.k12.mo.us (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA75861; Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:13:25 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:13:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Chris Dillon To: Chris Phillips Cc: Joe Clarke , Subject: Re: FreeBSD Router In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Chris Phillips wrote: > As mentioned, I use Intel EtherExpress Pro 10/100's exclusively on > all network servers. I don't imagine the NICs are a problem. > > Ideas? The P166 you're using might be just a bit underpowered for three 100Mbit links and 250 ipfw rules. I'm running 8 100Mbit full-duplex links (using fxp cards as well) with 66 static ipfw rules with an average additional 300 dynamic rules on a PIII-800 Xeon. Previously the exact same setup ran just fine on a PIII-500. This box has quite a few cycles to spare most of the time. Just now, while doing an FTP of a large file from one box to another on different networks, top reports 25% of the CPU used on the router (about 20% for interrupts). I averaged 11.22MBytes/sec for the file transfer, which would equate to 90Mbit/sec just for the raw file, not including any other overhead (TCP/IP, the Ethernet frames, etc.). Just from a CPU usage perspective, assuming no other bottlenecks pop up, I should be able to move about 400Mbit/sec between networks (thinking in terms of switch backplane bandwidth... 100Mbits IN one port and OUT another is 100Mbits, not 200Mbits). So, to be able to move at least 100Mbit/sec across your router (in one, out another) with about 250 ipfw rules, I'd guesstimate you would need at least a Pentium 233 MMX. Not that the MMX instructions help any, just that the MMX Pentiums (P55C?) have a larger L1 cache than previous Pentiums. A non-MMX Pentium probably isn't available at 233MHz anyway. :-) -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet - Available for IA32 (Intel x86) and Alpha architectures - IA64 (Itanium), PowerPC, and ARM architectures under development - http://www.freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message