Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 3 Jul 2005 02:04:38 -0700
From:      "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
To:        "Juha Saarinen" <juhasaarinen@gmail.com>, "FreeBSD questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: How to troubleshoot slow network performance with Realtek 8169s?
Message-ID:  <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEPAFBAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
In-Reply-To: <b34be8420507030036291f016d@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

The Realtek is a cheap adapter.  You can try hard-coding the
media type to see what happens, but the fact remains this is
nowhere near as good a card as the 82801B.  As a result of this
there hasn't been that much attention to driver optimizations,
you can review the work here:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/re/if_re.c

If playing around with the media type doesen't fix it you can
try a send-pr but your best off just pulling the card and
replacing it with another Intel, then mailing the card to one
of the driver developers.  Maybe in 6 months to a year you
might see a faster driver in FreeBSD - or maybe not.

Ted

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Juha Saarinen
>Sent: Sunday, July 03, 2005 12:37 AM
>To: FreeBSD questions
>Subject: How to troubleshoot slow network performance with Realtek
>8169s?
>
>
>I have a 3.06GHz Intel P4 server running 5.4-RELEASE-p3, with the
>following two NICs:
>
>fxp0: <Intel 82801BA/CAM (ICH2/3) Pro/100 Ethernet> port 
>0xdf00-0xdf3f mem 0xfea
>fc000-0xfeafcfff irq 20 at device 8.0 on pci2
>miibus0: <MII bus> on fxp0
>inphy0: <i82562ET 10/100 media interface> on miibus0
>inphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
>fxp0: Ethernet address: 00:d0:b7:c3:0f:20
>re0: <RealTek 8169S Single-chip Gigabit Ethernet> port 
>0xd800-0xd8ff mem 0xfeaff
>800-0xfeaff8ff irq 22 at device 10.0 on pci2
>miibus1: <MII bus> on re0
>rgephy0: <RTL8169S/8110S media interface> on miibus1
>rgephy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 
>1000baseTX, 1000baseTX
>-FDX, auto
>re0: Ethernet address: 00:08:a1:3c:72:bb
>
>The Intel NIC is built into the motherboard, and the Realtek 8169s
>sits in a 32-bit PCI slot.
>
>Performance for the Realtek adapter is slow though: around 25Mbit/s
>when serving clients with Fast Ethernet NICs, and around 250Mbit/s for
>Gigabit Ethernet ones.
>
>Having tried out the card in Windows boxes and seen the expected
>600Mbit/s, I expected something similar with FreeBSD 5.4. The odd
>thing is that you get approx. a quarter of the link speed with both
>100TX and 1000TX but not more under FreeBSD 5.4.
>
>The environment a switched network with known good cabling, standard
>size Ethernet frames, media autoselect and a kernel with
>DEVICE_POLLING and HZ=2000 which re(4) supports according to the
>polling(4) man page.
>
>#ifconfig re0
>re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>        options=58<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,POLLING>
><snip>
>        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseTX <full-duplex>)
>        status: active
>
>Enabling/disabling polling makes no real difference, apart from taking
>the edge of performance somewhat.
>
>#sysctl -a | grep polling
>kern.polling.idlepoll_sleeping: 1
>kern.polling.stalled: 0
>kern.polling.suspect: 367
>kern.polling.phase: 0
>kern.polling.enable: 1
>kern.polling.handlers: 1
>kern.polling.residual_burst: 0
>kern.polling.pending_polls: 0
>kern.polling.lost_polls: 782
>kern.polling.short_ticks: 731
>kern.polling.reg_frac: 20
>kern.polling.user_frac: 50
>kern.polling.poll_in_trap: 0
>kern.polling.idle_poll: 0
>kern.polling.burst_max: 150
>kern.polling.each_burst: 5
>kern.polling.burst: 110
>
>The re(4) man page doesn't have any troubleshooting hints and Googling
>didn't turn up anything useful.
>
>What else could I look for?
>
>-- 
>
>Juha
>_______________________________________________
>freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
>http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
>To unsubscribe, send any mail to 
>"freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
>



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEPAFBAA.tedm>