From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161475AbWFWBPJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:15:09 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161476AbWFWBPJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:15:09 -0400 Received: from shawidc-mo1.cg.shawcable.net ([24.71.223.10]:6463 "EHLO pd4mo2so.prod.shaw.ca") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161475AbWFWBPH (ORCPT ); Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:15:07 -0400 Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:13:28 -0600 From: Robert Hancock Subject: Re: Dropping Packets in 2.6.17 In-reply-to: To: danial_thom@yahoo.com Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22=5C=22P=E1draig=5C=22Brady=22?= , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Message-id: <449B4038.3040101@shaw.ca> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit References: User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 (Windows/20060516) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Danial Thom wrote: >> >> I didn't use ITR, I used NAPI. >> > > If thats the case then your "system" would have > the same problem that I'm encountering, since > polling results in buckets of packets being > dropped with heavy userland activity. This is to some extent by design. If you processed all packets purely in interrupt context, at some point you can start receiving so many packets that you never leave interrupt context to perform any other useful work, no matter if your adapter can avoid generating an interrupt for every packet. Packet floods can completely hang the machine. Pushing the work into a softirq and disabling NIC interrupts in the interim allows the machine to continue performing other useful work. If you want to give more priority to processing network packets at the expense of user processes then you likely need to increase the priority of the ksoftirqd thread(s). These compete for CPU time like any other processes. -- Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/