On Tue, 31 May 2005 09:06:47 +0200 Jaime Nebrera <jnebrera@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Ryan, > > > Just my $0.02 worth, no solutions I'm afraid, just an > > observation. The behavour you describe is virtually identical to the > > behavour I had on the first bridge I constructed which was using tulip > > network cards. The system would work wonderfully in test, but put it in > > situ on the network it would last a few minutes, then lock up with the CPU > > maxed out. We ended up changing the tulip cards to Intels which worked > > perfectly. > > > > The weird thing was on their own, the tulip cards worked fine, but > > couldn't handle a bridge config. At the time folks suggested that it was a > > combined interrupt/timing/buffering problem, but I didn't have the skills > > or time to track it down. From what you've said about the problem going > > away when the other network ports are disabled, I wouldn't mind betting its > > a related issue. 8 Gigabit ports would be a substantial number of > > interrupts, so I wouldn't be surprised if you're starting to max out the > > PCI bus, but I don't have any hard numbers to test that theory. > > IMHO I dont agree. We are using chipsets from Marvel, a well > stablished ones. Also, this might be a problem if the traffic was really > important, say 200Mbps or even 100Mbps, but this is not the case for > 0,5Mbps. Even those cheap Realtek 100Mbps ethernets can sustain that > traffic as a bridge. If you use the sk98lin driver it wants to do it's own spanning tree type failover so it multicasts STP packets all the time. > The problem is WHY suddenly some traffic appears on ethernet ports > that are not in use (and why not in two others) and WHY this traffic > keeps accelerating until it reaches a speed the hardware wont support > (2400Mbps total) Of course when such traffic is reached the system blows > away, the point is, why that traffic appears? You need to somehow figure out what those packets are (ethereal, tcpdump, ...) and go from there. > Regarding this point, we are using the same software solution with a > much cheaper box (Via 1Ghz, 4x Realtek 100 Ethernets) working as a > bridge and have been able to mange more than 20Mbps without a problem. > The difference is they dont have that HSRP set up. You need to use a driver with NAPI or the interrupt per packet overhead will swamp the box. > So it is related to HSRP or something related to IRQ as somebody has > suggested me on other email. The problem here is why this IRQ problem > didnt appear in our test environment (without HSRP) with more traffic > and open sessions than the client had? > > Still, thanks for your 2 cents :) > > Regards > > -- > Jaime Nebrera - jnebrera@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Consultor TI - ENEO Tecnologia SL > Telf.- 95 455 40 62 - 619 04 55 18 >
