Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 18:14:56 -0700 From: "Lawrence Cotnam Jr." <larry@pkunk.net> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: Trouble with 3Com 3C509 NIC Message-ID: <MKEOLDIJFGDJKDLHGFEGEEEJCBAA.larry@pkunk.net>
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Hi. I'm using FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE. I've been having a bit of a nightmare here with my FreeBSD server and its 3COM 3C509 network card. It's a AUI/BNC variety, currently using AUI with a MAU transceiver to 10base-T. Basically what I experience, is if I put the MTU at 1500 (default), I get serious stalling when initiating large FTP transfers on my LAN between a Windows computer and the server. This also affects my Samba server. My solution to this has been to drop the MTU down to 1000, which gets rid of the stalling problem and giving me fairly good network performance (600k/sec), but then I get a whole new and much worse pair of problems. During heavy network traffic, via FTP or Samba, two things occur... the collision light on my HUB becomes SOLID. Second, this part is intermittent, the server run out of buffer space and my server's network layer comes to a screeching halt for about 10 minutes. Has anyone experienced anything like this? NMBCLUSTERS in my kernel configuration is currently set at 4096. I'm considering increasing it to 10240 to see if it at least addresses the running out of buffers problem. But this is just a Band-Aid to a more serious problem, I think. Ultimately, I'm sure replacing the NIC with something else might be the best solution, but I'd like to see if there's any sort of software/driver solution I can apply before buying a new NIC. Helpfully, I'll include other configuration information about my LAN. It's running on a 5 port linksys workgroup hub. Two machines are connected (the server, and my Windows workstation), and an ADSL bridging modem (Alcatel 1000.) The server is a ProTech Single Board computer running a Pentium-166 with 64MB RAM. Please CC replies to my email as I do not subscribe to either of these mailing lists. Any help or suggestions would be very appreciated. Lawrence Cotnam Jr. (775) 337-2536 email: larry@pkunk.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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