Re: RFC: issues concerning the next NAPI interface

Mitchell Erblich
2007-08-25T02:43:20Z

Jan-Bernd Themann,

IMO, a box must be aware of the speed of all its
interfaces, whether the
interface impliments tail-drop or RED or XYZ, the latency
to access the
packet, etc.

Then when a packet arrives, a timer is started for
interrupt colelesing,
and to process awaiting packets, if tail-drop is
implemented, it is
possible to wait until a the input FIFO fills to a
specific point before
starting a timer.

This may maximize the number of packets per interupt. And
realize that
the worse case of a interrupt per packet is wirespeed
pings (echo
request/reply) of 64 bytes per packet.

Mitchell Erblich