Over the weekend I did some tests of the debloat-testing[1] tree, there's good, bad, and ugly results thus far. * The Good There are now ubuntu 10.10 debs up fpr 2.6.38-rc7-bloat2-db up for x86_64 systems at: http://mirrors.bufferbloat.net/debs/ The kernel boots. I've had it running for 3 days. In using my iwlagn 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61) Which I think supports aggregation... (?) I can happily report that the 130ms+ latency under load I experienced with this device on the default kernel has now been reduced to under ~3ms (using ping to test and iperf to saturate) while connected at 38Mbit. * The Bad The git tree[2] was updated this morning to -rc8. It would be nice to have debs for x86 and other architectures, too. While performing the wireless testing above, I also experienced 11% packet loss (this was admittedly under purposely bad conditions - 2 floors, 3 concrete walls, not so good antennas - see here[3] for my test rig - I was using a partially debloated wndr3700 for this test too) I haven't had time to check if the patched TC[4] supports the additional parameters of CHOKe and SFB yet. And that said, shaper scripts that integrate these AQMs are direly needed. Anyone? * The Ugly I'm concerned that the effective latency reduction I'm experiencing for TCP/IP is more tied to the wireless packet loss, rather than the new eBDP algorithm actually addressing it. How to go about testing this? Seeing some knobs or stats? The patches to the wired e1000e (and most likely e1000 driver) do not work correctly with TX rings set below 64. At 16, it ends up in a near permanent reset state: e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Reset adapter e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: Rx/Tx e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO It's harder to trigger at TX ring 32, but still happens under load. Even disabling TSO/GSO etc via ethtool had no effect. Thankfully you can increase the TX ring back to 64 and have a working network card again. It would be good if someone with more of a clue than the idjit that produced those patches could look into what it would really take to be able to reduce the dynamic range of the e1000e wired network DMA TX ring down to very low (say, 4) levels and still have TSO/GSO work. Having a good look at a responsive network stack without the complexities of wireless involved would be very helpful. Aside from that, no babies eaten, and progress made. My thx to John Linville, Dave Woodhouse, and everyone else involved in pulling this tree together! [1] https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat-devel/2011-February/000061.html [2] http://git.infradead.org/debloat-testing.git [3] http://nex-6.taht.net/images/housenet.png [4] https://github.com/dtaht/iproute2bufferbloat -- Dave Taht http://the-edge.blogspot.com -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
