Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:46:53 +0100 From: "Patrik Forsberg" <patrik.forsberg@dataphone.net> To: <freebsd-isp@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: freebsd router Message-ID: <375DD163B075E34EA3C10A6286E34A54C1D40C@exhsto1.se.dataphone.com>
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> and another concept you fail to grasp is that > with 1 processor the data for the entire > transaction sits in the cpu cache, whereas with 2 > it has to be read again. Its not necessarily > desireable to have 2 processors working on the > same data. There are a lot of issues that aren't > as black and white as "2 processors must be > faster than 1".=20 Aculy this is probably, cant say for sure, quite true. The logic behind = it all is that routing wont profit from dual processors.. becouse there = are nothing that benefit from threading. O.. yea I feel the flame coming!.. anyways.. if you only have a single route(default) and a network behind = it all .. yes.. simple UP routing would be the best. But what I do not = know and haven't ether read test or done any testing of myself is what = happends if you throw in a few routing protocols.. like BGP, OSPF and = perhaps a bit of RIP in the mess.. here I would guess that SMP systems = would perform better becouse the calculation of routing table could be = done threaded. Now.. I do not say this is so.. becouse, once more, I = haven't done any lab around it. Basicly tho FreeBSD 4.x does not = outperform a specialy built network router, simply becouse it ain't = built for it. If you're going to throw around over 500M data with a = million or more pps I would not recommend any generic server OS, but = rather a "real" router OS like IOS, AlliedWare or the like with a real = router platform. Altho I do have a FreeBSD 5.x Quagga sitting in a network today that do = shovel around about 1=BD - 2Gbit data at peak rate and ~400kpps, running = OSPF and BGP for IPv4 routing .. that doesnt mean it does it good :P As for UP vs. SMP perhaps there are good reasons why "real" router = builders go for UP - other than that its cheap :P Basicly it comes down to what you're going to use your router for. For = simple tasks a Quagga would work fine in both FreeBSD 4.x, 5.x and 6.x = and most likely you would benefit from using a single processor. But for = a large scale network with IPv4 and IPv6 in a dynamicly build enviroment = maybe this aint surch a good idea. Perhaps its better to spend a few = extra bucks on a real router with hw support and so on. And a answer to the OP: ----------------------- " I have run freebsd 4.11 as router for 3 years. I like freebsd because it is more stable and its security. Recently, the bandwidth grows to stop about 383M in mrtg graph and have packet loss when it reaches to 370M " Have you verified that you aint stuck with a 32bit nic ?=20 those have a peak rate at around 300-500Mbit/s, for better performance = go for 64bit nic and maybe even PCI-X. " I am trying to use freebsd 6.0. Could you help how to tune the freebsd to have high network throughput? I test the throughput by ipref software. the max is about 390M " Can't really help here. I usaly go for the stock setup exept recompiling = the kernel and world for the specific machine. " I configure polling, loader.conf and use the Intel(R) Pentium 3.0 Hz, intel Giga em0, sata drive with 2G memory " You dont need polling on intel nics.. it only slow things down. You = should never need polling if your running a router aculy. Well, that my to cent of the pussle :P ps.=20 o boy, this became longer the expected!=20 perhaps Im all wrong and you're all masters, but then again perhaps Im = the smart one and everyone else is just plain dumb! ds.
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