Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 14:40:02 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: shovey@buffnet.net (Steve) Cc: jas@flyingfox.com, richardc@csua.berkeley.edu, isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Decision in Router Purchase Message-ID: <199611142040.OAA25950@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.95.961114133332.18658A-100000@buffnet11.buffnet.net> from "Steve" at Nov 14, 96 01:41:34 pm
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> > I find this annoying. I'm sure you were having problems, and that > > interposing a Cisco between your users and your FreeBSD servers > > made the problem go away; but realize that "something [being] > > just a bit off with FreeBSD's tcp/ip" is not the only, nor indeed > > the most likely, explanation of the things you observed. > > > > Did you make any effort to investigate the problem (e.g., packet > > traces)? Did you report the problem? Or did you just try > > something (interposing the Cisco) and find that the problem went > > away? If so, fair enough; everybody's busy. But then you can't > > draw conclusions about what was wrong in the first place. > > > > I dont know the underlying low level of tcp/ip enough to run a packet > trace and interpret results. I did report this on freebsd lists and the > usenet news group. All I got was "BSD is the standard - you must be > crasy". > > I could come to no other resolution than to put them on the other side of > a router. The problem did not exist with all 'dialers in' - just a > subset, but a subset with no connecting features other than that they used > PPP. > > I dont experience the problem with linux boxes or the SCO's (I have > both) - Just the freebsd's later than version 2.0 (it was not until 2.0.5 > that the problem arose) with or without the extensions enabled. > > I know that to get it fixed I would have to become a low level freebsd > tcp/ip expert, find and fix it myself at the source level. I dont have > the time for that. So it might annoy you, but I found it very annoying to > spend a week trouble shooting 3 web servers, and another week trouble > shooting an identicle problem with a news server, only because I had > switched to freebsd on them - and then could only resolve it by putting > them the other side of a cisco - because Im crasy and BSD is perfect. I don't think BSD is perfect, but having served over four BILLION packets over the last three and a half months to the dial-in pool of Wisconsin's largest end user ISP, with an extremely diverse and unusual customer base, I find the "BSD TCP/IP is faulty" bit a little hard to swallow. You will naturally have to excuse my skepticism. I'm just as inclined to believe that you had crappy terminal servers that couldn't quite keep up with Ethernet "back-to-back packet" speeds. ... JG
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