Optimising Gigabit ethernet speeds
Dave
thinking a bit. I decided not to hijack that thread, but start another thread.
I've got a new Sun Ultra 27 (Quad core Xeon 3.33 GHz, 12 GB RAM). Today I fitted
a Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI adapter (X4444A) into my much older Blade 2000
( 2 x 1200 MHz, 8 GB RAM).
Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve the
performance between these two machines? The only device in the middle is a
Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might reasonably assume that the
older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to be quite as good as a gigabit
Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.
BTW, if anyone wants an Sun Quad Gigabit PCI card (X4444A), you might want to
see if 'nanaman0_0' has any more of these. The card was up for #50.00 (UK
pounds), but I made an offer of #40.00 and it was accepted. In fact, soon after
offering #40 I was going to go back and pay the #50, but he had already accepted
#40!
That's pretty cheap for Sun Quad Gigabit cards on eBay. The card was brand new,
in the original unopened Sun box, complete with drivers, manuals, license etc.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemVersion&item=300360965215
(No, he is not a friend of mine, but I thought that was a reasonable buy. I've
seen quad 10/100 cards sell for more than that on eBay. I paid #10 a month or
two ago to get a Quad Fast Ethernet, but when I got the Ultra 27, I had more of
a reason to put a faster card in the Blade 2000).
Not that the Blade 2000 is going to get a lot of use now. The reduction in noise
and heat is very welcome. I expect my next electricity bill will be lower than
the last! Though the Ultra 27 has cost me about #4,000 with disks and RAM, so I
guess it will take some time to recover that amount of money.
Dave
Ian Collins
> Seeing the other discussion on "solaris downloads much slower than
> linux" got me thinking a bit. I decided not to hijack that thread, but
> start another thread.
>
> I've got a new Sun Ultra 27 (Quad core Xeon 3.33 GHz, 12 GB RAM). Today
> I fitted a Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI adapter (X4444A) into my much
> older Blade 2000 ( 2 x 1200 MHz, 8 GB RAM).
>
> Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve
> the performance between these two machines? The only device in the
> middle is a Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might
> reasonably assume that the older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to
> be quite as good as a gigabit Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.
The most effective options I have found are to increase the buffer sizes
and enable jumbo frames (if the NICs and switch support them).
--
Ian Collins
solx
Hi Dave,
You might want to raise this in the OpenSolaris forums as suggestions
and changes could be incorporated which will ultimately feed into Solaris 11
Jim Leonard
> Is there anything that would be worth investigating tweaking to improve the
> performance between these two machines? The only device in the middle is a
> Netgear G5608 10/100/1000 8-port switch. One might reasonably assume that the
> older card in the Blade 2000 is not going to be quite as good as a gigabit
> Ethernet connector on a more modern machine.
Solaris by default sets the MSIX limit to 1 which limits hardware
interrupts to a single CPU. Something like "set
ddi_msix_alloc_limit=4" should allow each port to be handled by a
different CPU (assuming the 4-port card has four interrupts). The
OpenSolaris network tuning guide has other suggestions too, like
multiple soft queues.
Dave
Thank you. I'll have to check the switch, as its only a cheap one (Netgear).
It's not going to have the reconfigurability of a Cisco!
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