Re: igb broken? Unexplained weirdness with intel 82576 nics on a supermicro board.

On 05/08/2010 01:31 PM, Jack Vogel wrote:
> Looks like something to do with system C, you might isolate it, and try
> a back
> to back connection with its NICs, change cables, look at BIOS settings,
> change
> the slot the nic is in... All just off the top of my head.
>
> Jack
>
>
> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:41 AM, joe <joe_at_hostedcontent.com
> <mailto:joe_at_hostedcontent.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 05/08/2010 11:17 AM, Ian FREISLICH wrote:
>
>         joe wrote:
>
>             On 05/08/2010 06:55 AM, Ian FREISLICH wrote:
>
>                 joe wrote:
>
>                            I have just tried your suggeston and it has
>                     no effect for me ;(
>
>
>                 Do you have another brand of NIC that you can try?  At
>                 least that
>                 will isolate whether it's igb(4) or something else.
>
>
>             I will grab a new nic today and try...my options are limited
>             though.
>             Here are the nics i can get my hands on
>
>             TP-LINK TL-TG3468, 10/100/1000Mbps PCIe Adapter (supported
>             by fbsd?)
>
>
>         Based on the RTL8168B chip.  Should be supported by the re(4)
>         driver.
>
>             Intel (EXPI9301CT) Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter (yet another
>             intel nic)
>
>
>         i82574L chip.  Should be supported by the em(4) driver.  I have had
>         good performance in the past with this driver and less than
>         satisfactory performance with the igb(4) driver.
>
>         That may not be your problem though.  Before you go out and buy,
>         have a look at the amount of interrupt time your slow machine spends
>         in 'top' or 'systat -vm'.  systat will also show the interrupt rate
>         for each driver, perhaps it's not doing interrupt moderation
>         properly.
>         This will manifest as more than about a 1000 per second.  There are
>         loader tunables for the driver to increase the number of transfer
>         descriptors and to tune interrupt moderation.
>
>         You could try running trafshow (port) on the interface while
>         performing the transfer.  Perhaps promiscuous mode will turn off
>         some hardware feature that will improve things.  It may however
>         break hardware vlanning as it does on my 82575GB 4 port igb card.
>
>         Ian
>
>         --
>         Ian Freislich
>
>
>     I bought those two cards anyways, im in a rush to figure out this
>     problem. That being said i am still encountering the exact same
>     problem regardless on which network card i am running. I am at a
>     complete loss. I am about to try a raid card to see if the problem
>     might lay within the onboard sata ports. I did pull the server and
>     brought it home so that i can test more things quicker.
>
>     I am going to try using a raid card instead of the onboard sata
>     ports and see if i still encounter the same problem. I would love
>     any suggestions you may have on where to go from here to figure out
>     where the problem might be.
>
>     joe
>
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>

I think it might have something to so with the nics / switch, and their 
features. I brought the box home, plugged into my gb switch, and i am 
able to FTP data to the server at around 35MB/sec.

I dont know what would cause this other than some sort of issue with the 
the 3 different types of nics and the switch i am using.

Any suggestions?