Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 13:52:30 -0600 From: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Dan Ellard <ellard@eecs.harvard.edu>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: gigabit NIC of choice? Message-ID: <20020906135229.A18971@panzer.kdm.org> In-Reply-To: <3D78E69C.4152CC8@mindspring.com>; from tlambert2@mindspring.com on Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 10:32:12AM -0700 References: <Pine.BSF.4.44.0209061151560.35790-100000@bowser.eecs.harvard.edu> <3D78E69C.4152CC8@mindspring.com>
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On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 10:32:12 -0700, Terry Lambert wrote: > Dan Ellard wrote: > > What's the gigabit ethernet NIC of choice these days? (I've had good > > experiences with the NetGear G620T, but apparently this card is no > > longer being sold.) > > > > I'm looking for: > > > > - Easy FreeBSD integration. > > - Reliability. > > - High performance. > > The Tigon II has the best performances, but that's because > software people rewrote the firmware, instead of hardware > engineers moonlighting as programmers. 8-) 8-). You'll get good performance with the Tigon II with jumbo frames under -current with ZERO_COPY_SOCKETS and TI_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT turned on. Note that "good performance" == "lower CPU utilization" here, although it is difficult to see any improvement in -current with SMP enabled, and the improvement isn't as large in UP mode as it used to be. You can easily get wire rates with jumbo frames with a Tigon II without zero copy, given a reasonably fast machine. (At least on -stable. Reasonably fast == 1GHz Pentium III, 64 bit PCI.) With 1500 byte frames, though, the Tigon II won't perform as well as some other controllers. For most folks, performance with 1500 byte frames is what matters, since you usually need a jumbo-capable gigabit switch to take advantage of jumbo frames in anything more than a point to point environment. The modifications I made to the Tigon firmware (the ones that are in FreeBSD) are actually relatively minor. The main "trick" is to make sure that the header is in its own scatter/gather element, so the payload will be page aligned. (Assuming the second and subsequent scatter/gather elements are page aligned.) So if your workload consists of jumbo frames for the most part, and receive performance is important, I would suggest a Tigon II-based board, like the GA620T, if you can find one. (Obviously that's getting more and more difficult nowadays.) Otherwise, I would suggest another card with better performance with 1500 byte frames. (I haven't done any tests with other boards, so I can't make specific recommendations.) Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@kdm.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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