From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: SKGE backport to 2.4 : success Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2006 10:56:09 -0800 Message-ID: <20061106105609.7c115cb6@freekitty> References: <20061028205707.GA722@1wt.eu> <20061104210855.GB4778@1wt.eu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Miller , Jeff Garzik , netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:52401 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752259AbWKFS53 (ORCPT ); Mon, 6 Nov 2006 13:57:29 -0500 To: Willy Tarreau In-Reply-To: <20061104210855.GB4778@1wt.eu> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 22:08:55 +0100 Willy Tarreau wrote: > Hi Stephen, > > I don't know if you received my mail since I got no reply. > > Thanks in advance for your comments, > Willy > > On Sat, Oct 28, 2006 at 10:57:07PM +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote: > > Hi Stephen, > > > > In my own kernels, I've added your backport of SKGE to 2.4 that I found > > here : > > > > http://developer.osdl.org/shemminger/releases/skge-sky2-backport.tar.bz2 > > > > It seems to work pretty well compared to the original syskonnect driver > > (up to and including 8.36). Several people around me have reported very > > slow NFS operations with the official driver, which I finally attributed > > to a strange effect of UDP packets not going out after a while until they > > get "pushed" by a TCP packet. I even noticed the problem at the company > > and we turned the NFS server to an unused 100 Mbps card to workaround the > > problem before being able to fully ananlyze the problem. > > > > It seems your driver is getting mature and its performance is very close to > > the official one, while its code is smaller and apparently more reliable. I > > was thinking about merging it in mainline 2.4 as a fix for people having > > trouble with the syskonnect driver. It might also be easier to backport fixes > > from 2.6 to 2.4 when the driver is the same. > > > > I don't think we risk any regression because it won't replace an existing > > driver, but will provide one to people who are used to download new versions > > from an external tree. > > > > Also, I'm not yet sure whether I would also backport the sky2 driver, because > > I know about a handful boxes running in production with the official one with > > 88E8053 chips at high packet rates with no trouble at all. Anyway, as long as > > the backport does not prevent them from using the external driver, there > > should be no problem. > > > > I'd like to get your opinion on this matter, and of course, Jeff's and Davem's. > > > > Thanks in advance, > > Willy > > The backport needs to be updated. It is of older code. I plan to do a new backport this week. The backport version doesn't use NAPI, because of issues with not wanting to change netdevice.h. For a good 2.4 version, I would make a version that was closer to 2.6 code (using NAPI). I did the backport because one of the equipment donors gave a VPN box whose base OS is RHEL based on 2.4. -- Stephen Hemminger