Intel 1000 MT slow to restart

Intel 1000 MT slow to restart

[Patrick R. McManus]

I'm running intel's e1000 driver (versions 4.4.12 and tried 4.6.11)
for a 1000/MT (dual) nic on a 2.4.19 kernel.

for normal operations, everything is fine.. however if I do a 
"ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" 20 or 30 seconds passes where I
can't do any traffic. the ifconfig up comes back quickly, and ifconfig
reports the driver as up (and netlink thinks its up if I try and add
another one).. I just can't move any traffic. no rx's and my tx's only
move counters in the driver - they don't actually make it to the
wire. 

if I do "ifconfig eth0 down; sleep 30; ifconfig eth0 up" all is well
immediately after the up.. The driver doesn't seem to be doing
anything different in either case - its as if the NIC itself is
enforcing some kind of quiet period. 

I'm really writing to see if I'm crazy and hoping someone else can
corroborate this is what they've seen too.

help?

-Patrick

RE: Intel 1000 MT slow to restart

[Feldman, Scott]

> I'm running intel's e1000 driver (versions 4.4.12 and tried 
> 4.6.11) for a 1000/MT (dual) nic on a 2.4.19 kernel.
> 
> for normal operations, everything is fine.. however if I do a 
> "ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" 20 or 30 seconds 
> passes where I can't do any traffic. the ifconfig up comes 
> back quickly, and ifconfig reports the driver as up (and 
> netlink thinks its up if I try and add another one).. I just 
> can't move any traffic. no rx's and my tx's only move 
> counters in the driver - they don't actually make it to the wire. 
> 
> if I do "ifconfig eth0 down; sleep 30; ifconfig eth0 up" all 
> is well immediately after the up.. The driver doesn't seem to 
> be doing anything different in either case - its as if the 
> NIC itself is enforcing some kind of quiet period. 
> 
> I'm really writing to see if I'm crazy and hoping someone 
> else can corroborate this is what they've seen too.

Do you have spanning tree turned on on your switch?  This could cause
such delays.

-scott

RE: Intel 1000 MT slow to restart

[Hen, Shmulik]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Feldman, Scott 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 7:19 AM
> To: Patrick R. McManus; netdev@oss.sgi.com
> Subject: RE: Intel 1000 MT slow to restart
> 
> 
> > I'm running intel's e1000 driver (versions 4.4.12 and tried 
> > 4.6.11) for a 1000/MT (dual) nic on a 2.4.19 kernel.
> > 
> > for normal operations, everything is fine.. however if I do a 
> > "ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" 20 or 30 seconds 
> > passes where I can't do any traffic. the ifconfig up comes 
> > back quickly, and ifconfig reports the driver as up (and 
> > netlink thinks its up if I try and add another one).. I just 
> > can't move any traffic. no rx's and my tx's only move 
> > counters in the driver - they don't actually make it to the wire. 
> > 
> > if I do "ifconfig eth0 down; sleep 30; ifconfig eth0 up" all 
> > is well immediately after the up.. The driver doesn't seem to 
> > be doing anything different in either case - its as if the 
> > NIC itself is enforcing some kind of quiet period. 
> > 
> > I'm really writing to see if I'm crazy and hoping someone 
> > else can corroborate this is what they've seen too.
> 
> Do you have spanning tree turned on on your switch?  This could cause
> such delays.
> 
> -scott
> 

We've also seen this behavior with certain switches (e.g. Extreme Networks
Summit 7i) even with STP turned off.
The switch simply delays traffic for ~30sec after link was restored. I
believe this delay is configurable.

	Shmulik.