Re: [announce] [patch] limiting IRQ load, irq-rewrite-2.4.11-B5

Benjamin LaHaise
2001-10-04T23:26:58Z

On Fri, Oct 05, 2001 at 12:20:34AM +0100, Alex Bligh - linux-kernel wrote:
> Rather than bugging the author of the driver card, we've actually
> been trying to fix it, down to rewriting the firmware. So for
> this purpose I/we am/are the driver maintainer thanks. However,
> there are limitations like bus speed which mean that in practice
> if we receive a large enough number of small packets each second,
> the box will saturate.

Not if the driver has a decent irq mitigation schema and uses the
hw flow control + NAPI bits.

> Not sure this required jumping down my throat.

Frankly I'm sick of this entire discussion where people claim that no
form of interrupt throttling is ever needed. It's an emergency measure
that is needed under some circumstances as very few drivers properly
protect against this kind of DoS. Drivers that do things correctly will
never trigger the hammer. Plus it's configurable. If you'd bothered to
read and understand the rest of this thread you wouldn't have posted.

-ben