*BSD News Article 49519


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!uhog.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!lkg.dec.com!thomas
From: thomas@lkg.dec.com (Matt Thomas)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: very high collisions on FreeBSD machine
Date: 22 Aug 1995 13:03:37 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 32
Sender: thomas@netrix.lkg.dec.com (Matt Thomas)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <41ckj9$vle@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>
References: <ortegaDDpIpG.8Mu@netcom.com>
Reply-To: thomas@lkg.dec.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: netrix.enet.dec.com
X-Newsreader: mxrn 6.18-30


In article <ortegaDDpIpG.8Mu@netcom.com>, ortega@netcom.com (John Ortega) writes:
|>On a medium duty network (most machines show low collision rates) we have 
|>a genuine AMI P90 motherboard with 32M ram, 512K cache, 1 NCR scsi, 1 
|>adaptec 2940 scsi, and 1 PCI DEC nic. This machine works qite well, but 
|>for the high collision rates it gets. A current netstat -ia showed:
|>
|>ipkts		ierrs		opkts		oers		coll
|>883328843	280		34264945	0		10754790
|>
|>Could this be software, are must it be hardware (I am not sure if 
|>software can have any thing to do with collisions) ?

That can be quite normal.  The DC21040 can start transmits right after
the minimum inter-frame gap (as can many other chips) so it's more likely
to collide than older chips (such as the LANCE) which could not switch
from receive to transmit as quickly.  (because of that, the LANCE would
defer that packet since the Ethernet was already busy).

Also note that the DC21040 also returns the count of collisions (which
the driver adds to collisions; many other driver don't have that and so
add 1 for a single collison and 2 for a multiple collision; the DC21040
driver will add 1..15 depending on the number which may make the values
seem high).

So unless you have a performance problem, the collision can be safely
ignored.
-- 
Matt Thomas                          Internet:   thomas@lkg.dec.com
U*X Networking                       WWW URL:    http://ftp.dec.com/%7Ethomas/
Digital Equipment Corporation        Disclaimer: This message reflects my
Littleton, MA                                    own warped views, etc.