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Date:      Thu, 3 Aug 2000 11:05:06 -0500
From:      "Travis Leuthauser" <travis@winconx.com>
To:        <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   3Com 3C905b-TX
Message-ID:  <034b01bffd64$97343040$20503cd0@travis>

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I'm posting this to questions and hackers in the hopes that someone can help
me.  Here's my scenario:

I have a news server running 4.1 Stable cvsup'd 2 days ago.  Running 3.X I
had no problems.  Had to update to 4 because my 45 G Ultra66 IDE drives were
being very stupid under 3.X.  After the update, I noticed that the most I
could get out of a binary download from the news server on my 100Mbit
network was about 25k/s.  After a few hours of looking over everything and
testing an ftp from one of the clients (running an ftp server).  I
determined that it was just my news service performing slowly.  I was able
to ftp a 700M file that averaged 800k/s.  Mysteriously my news service
picked back up to its normal speed.  When I checked the news server, this is
the message that was displayed on my terminal:

xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing start threshold to 180 bytes.

Since then, it has popped up a few more times I think now the threshold is
up to 420.  I looked at the xl driver and found where it sets the initial
value:

sc->xl_tx_thresh = XL_MIN_FRAMELEN;

What if I were to change it to say:

sc->xl_tx_thresh = 540;

What effect would that have on my system, good or bad?  Is there an optimum
value to set?  Should I just change out the NIC or is there another card
holding up the bus?  If I wanted to know what the current value of the
buffer is, is there a command that would show me?  If I change the value, do
I need to just recompile my kernel, or is there something else I need to do?

I saw a few posts from 99 about the topic, but no decisive answer was given.
I am going to list the specifics of all the hardware in the box as well as
the major software/ports running on it.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Travis Leuthauser
Network Administrator
WinConX Online, Inc.

Hardware Specs:

Pentium !!! 500Mhz
512M RAM
Gigabyte GA-6VXE+ w/ VIA Apollo Pro AGPSet
AOpen PG128 AGP Video
3Com 3c905b-tx NIC (has two IP's: one for incoming news - one to feed news
out to users)
Adaptec 2940U2W
4 IBM 9G UW SCSI Drives
Western Digital 45G (using Ultra66)
IBM 45G (using Ultra66)
Western Digital 27G
AOpen 40x CDRom

Software:
named
ssh1
qmail 1.03 w/ tcpserver
big brother 1.4c
dnews 5.4f5 for FreeBSD 4

dmesg output:

Copyright (c) 1992-2000 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.1-STABLE #2: Tue Aug  1 16:29:24 CDT 2000
    root@news.winconx.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/NEWS
Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
Timecounter "TSC"  frequency 501139586 Hz
CPU: Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron (501.14-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x673  Stepping = 3

Features=0x387f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,
PAT,PSE36,PN,MMX,FXSR,XMM>
real memory  = 536805376 (524224K bytes)
avail memory = 518823936 (506664K bytes)
Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc031e000.
Pentium Pro MTRR support enabled
md0: Malloc disk
npx0: <math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
pcib2: <VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on
pci0
pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib2
pci1: <SiS 6326 SVGA controller> at 0.0
isab0: <VIA 82C596B PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: <VIA 82C596B ATA66 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on
pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
pci0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> at 7.2 irq 11
xl0: <3Com 3c905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL> port 0xe800-0xe87f mem
0xe0801000-0xe080107f irq 10 at device 8.0 on pci0
xl0: Ethernet address: 00:50:04:22:cc:4f
miibus0: <MII bus> on xl0
xlphy0: <3Com internal media interface> on miibus0
xlphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
ahc0: <Adaptec 2940 Ultra2 SCSI adapter> port 0xec00-0xecff mem
0xe0800000-0xe0800fff irq 12 at device 9.0 on pci0
ahc0: aic7890/91 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/255 SCBs
pcib1: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci2: <PCI bus> on pcib1
fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0
fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: Generic chipset (NIBBLE-only) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0
lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ad0: 42934MB <WDC WD450AA-00BAA0> [87233/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA66
ad1: 43979MB <IBM-DTLA-307045> [89355/16/63] at ata0-slave using UDMA66
ata1-master: DMA limitted to UDMA33, non-ATA66 compliant cable
ad2: 25941MB <WDC WD272AA> [52707/16/63] at ata1-master using UDMA33
acd0: CDROM <CD-ROM 40X/AKU> at ata1-slave using PIO4
Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a
da1 at ahc0 bus 0 target 1 lun 0
da1: <IBM DNES-309170W SA30> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da1: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da1: 8748MB (17916240 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1115C)
da2 at ahc0 bus 0 target 2 lun 0
da2: <IBM DNES-309170W SA30> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da2: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da2: 8748MB (17916240 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1115C)
da4 at ahc0 bus 0 target 4 lun 0
da4: <IBM DNES-309170W S80K> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da4: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da4: 8748MB (17916240 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1115C)
da3 at ahc0 bus 0 target 3 lun 0
da3: <IBM DNES-309170W SA30> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device
da3: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 31, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da3: 8748MB (17916240 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 1115C)
da0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <IBM DDRS-34560W S97B> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 15, 16bit), Tagged Queueing
Enabled
da0: 4357MB (8925000 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 555C)
pid 1037 (dmulti), uid 8: exited on signal 11 (core dumped)
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 120 bytes
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 180 bytes
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 240 bytes
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 300 bytes
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 360 bytes
xl0: transmission error: 90
xl0: tx underrun, increasing tx start threshold to 420 bytes




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