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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!col.hp.com!news.dtc.hp.com!hpscit.sc.hp.com!hpax!cupnews2.cup.hp.com!raj From: raj@cup.hp.com (Rick Jones) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Ethernet Card Benchmarks Date: 6 Oct 1995 00:26:29 GMT Organization: Information Networks Division: Hewlett Packard Lines: 38 Message-ID: <451t3l$ev1@hpindda.cup.hp.com> References: <DFzI5F.H20@ritz.mordor.com> Reply-To: raj@cup.hp.com NNTP-Posting-Host: hpindio.cup.hp.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Chris Mauritz (ritz@ritz.mordor.com) wrote: : Has anyone done detailed benchmarking with various ethernet : cards and FreeBSD? : I've been using 3COM 3C509's, but I was considering going : with either (a) faster ISA cards or (b) looking into some : 100mbit ethernet cards. It should be possible to use netperf (http://www.cup.hp.com/netperf/NetperfPagel.html) to get some comparisons. There is a database of results at that URL - one which could use a few more submittals ... :) : This is mostly just to speed up NFS traffic and remote : backups. : Any tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Here is where things could be interesting - 100Mbit/s Fast Ethernet does not increase the MTU of the link, so data transfer is no more "efficient" from the persoective of the hosts on either end - they still need as much CPU to move 1024 bytes of data as before. So, if you are at/near CPU saturation with 10 Mbit/s you will not necessarily see much of a change in performance (modulo switching from a Programmed IO to a DMA card). Also, unless your NFS traffic is primarily reads and writes of 8KB, NFS is more latency sensitive than it is bandwidth sensitive. Things like getattr and lookup typically are small (< 192 bytes), so their performance is limited more by the host CPU path lengths and the delays in I/O busses and interface cards than bit rate on the wire. So, if you do get a chance to play with netperf, be sure to include one the TCP_RR or UDP_RR test in your benchmarking. happy benchmarking, rick jones http://www.cup.hp.com/netperf/NetperfPage.html