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Date:      Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:02:49 -0500
From:      "Michael MacLeod" <mikemacleod@gmail.com>
To:        "Nikos Vassiliadis" <nvass@teledomenet.gr>
Cc:        freebsd-net@freebsd.org, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
Subject:   Re: Multilink PPP Download Speeds With Round-Robin Packets
Message-ID:  <e8f0b580801161002q110459e8oca123a34776c9a75@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <200801161204.23905.nvass@teledomenet.gr>
References:  <e8f0b580801152214j63af04c0t693f4ed035d75b51@mail.gmail.com> <478DAF82.8010702@elischer.org> <e8f0b580801152344p3e6f6d45v4561f882f15443b9@mail.gmail.com> <200801161204.23905.nvass@teledomenet.gr>

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On Jan 16, 2008 5:04 AM, Nikos Vassiliadis <nvass@teledomenet.gr> wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 January 2008 09:44:05 Michael MacLeod wrote:
> > On Jan 16, 2008 2:17 AM, Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org> wrote:
> > > 1/ when downloading, does the load on each incoming interface
> use "netstat -I xl0 -w 1", "netstat -I xl1 -w 1" and "netstat -I tun0 -w 1"
> or "systat -ifstat" for an interactive terminal display.

Here's some sample output from netstat -I <interface> -w 1:

            input          (xl0)           output
   packets  errs      bytes    packets  errs      bytes colls
       226     0     337862        157     0      12911     0
       219     0     325854        156     0      13040     0
       232     0     344078        156     0      12696     0
       226     0     337862        157     0      13063     0

            input          (xl1)           output
   packets  errs      bytes    packets  errs      bytes colls
       224     0     334834        157     0      12931     0
       223     0     336188        156     0      12992     0
       225     0     336348        157     0      12971     0

            input         (tun0)           output
   packets  errs      bytes    packets  errs      bytes colls
       447     0     658506        320     0      19148     0
       457     0     669064        311     0      18440     0
       454     0     667474        314     0      18500     0
       442     0     648204        329     0      20044     0

According to systat -ifstat I'm getting approx 320kb a sec down each
pipe, for a total throughput of approx 640kb. I was downloading
several copies of the linux kernel from kernel.org in parallel, and
maxing out the connection.

> > > 2/ do the IP stats show a lot of out-of order packets?
> > > (netstat -s -ptcp I think)
> > > in fact ip reassembly problems might be of interest.
> > > (netstat -s -pip (?))
> > > 3/are there many retransmissions?
> Though it seems that most of the traffic is forwarded and thus the
> FreeBSD host will not get much TCP. So, you wouldn't know much of
> the retransmissions happening. You could use 2-3 instances of
> "fetch ftp://somewhere/something" in parallel to fully utilize
> your DSL lines from your FreeBSD box.

# netstat -s -ptcp
< snip >
        396978 packets received
                67065 acks (for 184666044 bytes)
                11483 duplicate acks
                0 acks for unsent data
                296659 packets (405850084 bytes) received in-sequence
                9171 completely duplicate packets (64530 bytes)
                0 old duplicate packets
                2 packets with some dup. data (1017 bytes duped)
                20958 out-of-order packets (29976306 bytes)
                0 packets (0 bytes) of data after window
                0 window probes
                1111 window update packets
                4 packets received after close
                0 discarded for bad checksums
                0 discarded for bad header offset fields
                0 discarded because packet too short

< snip >

# netstat -s -pip
ip:
        4622318 total packets received
        0 bad header checksums
        0 with size smaller than minimum
        0 with data size < data length
        0 with ip length > max ip packet size
        0 with header length < data size
        0 with data length < header length
        0 with bad options
        0 with incorrect version number
        0 fragments received
        0 fragments dropped (dup or out of space)
        0 fragments dropped after timeout
        0 packets reassembled ok
        405541 packets for this host
        0 packets for unknown/unsupported protocol
        4198571 packets forwarded (0 packets fast forwarded)
        4091 packets not forwardable
        0 packets received for unknown multicast group
        0 redirects sent
        369718 packets sent from this host
        0 packets sent with fabricated ip header
        0 output packets dropped due to no bufs, etc.
        0 output packets discarded due to no route
        0 output datagrams fragmented
        0 fragments created
        0 datagrams that can't be fragmented
        0 tunneling packets that can't find gif
        0 datagrams with bad address in header

So there are lots of out of order packets, but that's to be expected
with round-robin multilink ppp. I ran these after downloading three
copies of the linux kernel in parallel, and there are no packets that
were reassembled.

> [snip]
> > > 5/ have you tried mpd? (in ports (multilink ppp daemon).)
> > > it may have different operating characteristics.. (it does it all
> > > in the kernel using netgraph). Sounds like you need to fix it
> > > at the other end but mpd might trigger different behaviour
> > > in the router.
> >
> > I looked into mpd first. I tried several of the ports (mpd, mpd4, and
> > mpd5) all without much success. There isn't much documentation for mpd
> > (at least compared to the standard userland ppp).
>
> No, mpd is adequately documented. /usr/local/share/doc/mpd*
>
> > Also, both of the
> > individuals who I know have successfully used multilink ppp and
> > TekSavvy are using userland ppp. I'd be happy to use mpd, except that
> > I'm *almost* there with userland ppp, and I'm guessing it's something
> > I've overlooked or misconfigered somewhere and once I find and correct
> > it, it'll work like a charm.
>
> If you are willing to try mpd, you can find a multilink PPPoE setup here:
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2007-September/157110.html
>
> You can use the above example with mpd4.

I tried mpd first, and did manage to find the above config and tried
to use it. I was not successful unfortunately. When playing with mpd I
even downloaded a local copy of the documentation you mentioned so I
could easily browse it from work (I have a sweet job with plenty of
downtime). Given that the other two freebsd users doing mutlilink ppp
on the dslreports forums were using userland ppp, I decided to focus
on that.

If I can't get userland ppp working by this weekend, I'll try your mpd
config once more, and see if I can make it work. However, when I was
reading up on it, I seem to recall that mpd did not support either
packet splitting or round-robin (I forget which, and I forget where I
read it), and since my connection to TekSavvy uses both of these, it
might be a non-starter.

I'd really like to get userland ppp working however, since I know it's
possible for it to work optimally.

Thanks for your patience,
Mike



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