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Date:      Sat, 14 Dec 2002 17:23:11 -0600
From:      "Jack L. Stone" <jackstone@sage-one.net>
To:        Josh Brooks <user@mail.econolodgetulsa.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: NMBCLUSTERS over 4096 dangerous in any way ?
Message-ID:  <3.0.5.32.20021214172311.01244eb8@mail.sage-one.net>
In-Reply-To: <20021214143213.E77087-100000@mail.econolodgetulsa.com>

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At 02:36 PM 12.14.2002 -0800, Josh Brooks wrote:
>
>Hi,
>
>I have a firewall that is starting to get a little overworked.  I
>currently have this line in my kernel config:
>
>options NMBCLUSTERS=4096
>
>and I am starting to hit that limit:
>
>276/4096/4096 mbuf clusters in use (current/peak/max)
>
>So, the obvious response is to increase that NMBCLUSTERS value.
>
>-----
>
>However, in all the examples and discussion I have seen, I have never seen
>anyone discuss raising it above 4096.  I have no indication that raising
>it to ... say ... 8192 would be dangerous/risky, but I think I should ask
>just to make sure.
>
>The system is a P3-600 with 256 megs physical ram, and 128 megs swap.
>This system has no other duties than firewalling.  System is running
>4.4-RELEASE.
>
>SO:
>
>1. any comments on raising NMBCLUSTERS to 8192 ?  any other values that
>need to be tuned to support that ?
>
>2. what is the max I could safely raise NMBCLUSTERS to ?
>
>
>thanks!
>
>

Further to my earlier post on this subject and that I chose to use 8192 in
my kernel for NMBCLUSTERS, I found this note in my files from some research:

########################################################################
A parameter you may need to change for a busy server, gateway or firewall
is NMBCLUSTERS. This controls the size of the kernel mbuf cluster map. On
your computer, if you get messages like "mb_map full", you need to increase
the value of this parameter. If traffic on a network interface stops for no
apparent reason, this may also be a sign that you need to increase the
value of NMBCLUSTERS. A reasonable value on the i386 port with most 100Mbps
ethernet interfaces (no matter how many the machine has) is 8192. 

option NMBCLUSTERS=8192
########################################################################

Best regards,
Jack L. Stone,
Administrator

SageOne Net
http://www.sage-one.net
jackstone@sage-one.net

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