Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[john]

Hi,

I originally sent this email to the linux-net list before realizing it
probably belonged on the netdev list.

I just subscribed to this list, so I apologize if this is a known issue.  I
did try looking through the archives, and did not see it there either.

We just put together a new "app server" based on a P35 chipset motherboard,
4 gigabytes of RAM, Q6600 processor, and integrated Realtek RTL8111B gigabit
NIC.  When we SSH or RSH into this machine, and try to run any X application
(emacs, firefox) the application's graphics are drawn *extremely* slowly.
It can take 10 seconds from the time an emacs window pops up until it is
done drawing all of it's icons.

Firefox is even worse.  Loading pages is painful.  The "spinning dots", in the
upper right and corner, never actually spin.  It takes a long time for a
page to be displayed, and when it is draw, it is all-at-once.  Scrolling a
page up/down is extremely jurky.

We are currently running kernel 2.6.22.1, but I have also tried going back
to 2.6.20.x without any change in behavior.

The NIC driver is loaded as:

kernel: eth0: RTL8168b/8111b at 0xffffc20000640000, 00:1a:4d:43:db:d4, IRQ 17

I tried going to Realtek's site to see if there was a newer driver, but the
only driver there seems to be for older kernels.

I finally put an old Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC in the system, and that has
SOLVED the problem.  We would prefer using the integrated NIC, however.


04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)
          Subsystem: Giga-byte Technology Unknown device e000
          Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
          I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
          Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
          [virtual] Expansion ROM at fb200000 [disabled] [size=64K]
          Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
          Capabilities: [48] Vital Product Data
          Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/1 Enable-
          Capabilities: [60] Express Endpoint IRQ 0
          Capabilities: [84] Vendor Specific Information
          Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
          Capabilities: [12c] Virtual Channel
          Capabilities: [148] Device Serial Number 68-81-ec-10-00-00-00-25
          Capabilities: [154] Power Budgeting

Anyone have any suggestions for solving this problem?

Thanks,

John


-- 

|         |
+--+  ==  |  John Patrick Poet                 Blue Sky Tours
|  |      |  Director of Systems Development   10832 Prospect Ave., N.E.
|     +---+  john@BlueSkyTours.COM             Albuquerque, N.M. 87112
|     |      Ph. 505 293 9462                  Fx. 505 293 6902

Re: Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[Francois Romieu]

john@BlueSkyTours.com <john@BlueSkyTours.com> :
[...]
> Anyone have any suggestions for solving this problem?

Try 2.6.23-rc1 when it is published or apply against 2.6.22 one of:
http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20070628-2.6.22-rc6-r8169-test.patch
http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.22-rc6/r8169-20070628/

-- 
Ueimor

Re: Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[john]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, Francois Romieu wrote:

> john@BlueSkyTours.com <john@BlueSkyTours.com> :
> [...]
>> Anyone have any suggestions for solving this problem?
>
> Try 2.6.23-rc1 when it is published or apply against 2.6.22 one of:
> http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20070628-2.6.22-rc6-r8169-test.patch

Unfortunately, the 20070628 patch did not make any difference.


> http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.22-rc6/r8169-20070628/


I tried various patches from that directory (aren't most or all of them
included in the 20070628 patch?), but none of them helped either.


This problem could be very difficult to track down.  Like I said, it
definately effects emacs and firefox being "drawn" on a remote computer.
Ping times, however, are not that bad:

PING 192.168.26.150: 56 data bytes
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=0. time=0.287 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=1. time=0.279 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=2. time=0.196 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=3. time=0.201 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=4. time=0.159 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=5. time=0.148 ms
64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=6. time=0.150 ms

Also, wget gets good throughput when retrieving files.

It just seems to be X traffic which is extremely slow.  Using the old
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC, emacs comes up virtually instantaneously.  Using the
integrated Realtek 8111B, emacs takes 10 seconds to draw.

Thank you very much for trying to help.

John

Re: Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[Francois Romieu]

john@BlueSkyTours.com <john@BlueSkyTours.com> :
[...]
> Unfortunately, the 20070628 patch did not make any difference.

@!#$

[...]
> >http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.22-rc6/r8169-20070628/
> 
> I tried various patches from that directory (aren't most or all of them
> included in the 20070628 patch?), but none of them helped either.

The patches from the directory should be applied on top of each other.
When they are all applied, you get the 20070628 patch. You are not supposed
to apply them in random order (there is some margin of course).

[...]
> This problem could be very difficult to track down.  Like I said, it
> definately effects emacs and firefox being "drawn" on a remote computer.
> Ping times, however, are not that bad:
> 
> PING 192.168.26.150: 56 data bytes
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=0. 
> time=0.287 ms
[...]
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=6. 
> time=0.150 ms

It looks quite fine.

> Also, wget gets good throughput when retrieving files.
> 
> It just seems to be X traffic which is extremely slow.  Using the old
> Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC, emacs comes up virtually instantaneously.  Using the
> integrated Realtek 8111B, emacs takes 10 seconds to draw.

Can you take a tethereal -w log.pcap for both cards with the command
'ping -c 4 $someplace && emacs' and publish the log.pcap files ?

-- 
Ueimor

Re: Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[Bill Fink]

Hi John,

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, john@BlueSkyTours.com wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, Francois Romieu wrote:
> 
> > john@BlueSkyTours.com <john@BlueSkyTours.com> :
> > [...]
> >> Anyone have any suggestions for solving this problem?
> >
> > Try 2.6.23-rc1 when it is published or apply against 2.6.22 one of:
> > http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20070628-2.6.22-rc6-r8169-test.patch
> 
> Unfortunately, the 20070628 patch did not make any difference.
> 
> 
> > http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.22-rc6/r8169-20070628/
> 
> 
> I tried various patches from that directory (aren't most or all of them
> included in the 20070628 patch?), but none of them helped either.
> 
> 
> This problem could be very difficult to track down.  Like I said, it
> definately effects emacs and firefox being "drawn" on a remote computer.
> Ping times, however, are not that bad:
> 
> PING 192.168.26.150: 56 data bytes
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=0. time=0.287 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=1. time=0.279 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=2. time=0.196 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=3. time=0.201 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=4. time=0.159 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=5. time=0.148 ms
> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=6. time=0.150 ms
> 
> Also, wget gets good throughput when retrieving files.
> 
> It just seems to be X traffic which is extremely slow.  Using the old
> Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC, emacs comes up virtually instantaneously.  Using the
> integrated Realtek 8111B, emacs takes 10 seconds to draw.
> 
> Thank you very much for trying to help.

Any chance that the Realtek 8111B is sharing interrupts with another
device ("cat /proc/interrupts")?  Perhaps it is, and the Linksys isn't,
which could explain the difference in behavior.  Just something simple
to check and either rule in or out.

						-Bill

Re: Realtek RTL8111B serious performance issues

[john]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Bill Fink wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, john@BlueSkyTours.com wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, Francois Romieu wrote:
>>
>>> john@BlueSkyTours.com <john@BlueSkyTours.com> :
>>> [...]
>>>> Anyone have any suggestions for solving this problem?
>>>
>>> Try 2.6.23-rc1 when it is published or apply against 2.6.22 one of:
>>> http://www.fr.zoreil.com/people/francois/misc/20070628-2.6.22-rc6-r8169-test.patch
>>
>> Unfortunately, the 20070628 patch did not make any difference.
>>
>>
>>> http://www.fr.zoreil.com/linux/kernel/2.6.x/2.6.22-rc6/r8169-20070628/
>>
>>
>> I tried various patches from that directory (aren't most or all of them
>> included in the 20070628 patch?), but none of them helped either.
>>
>>
>> This problem could be very difficult to track down.  Like I said, it
>> definately effects emacs and firefox being "drawn" on a remote computer.
>> Ping times, however, are not that bad:
>>
>> PING 192.168.26.150: 56 data bytes
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=0. time=0.287 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=1. time=0.279 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=2. time=0.196 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=3. time=0.201 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=4. time=0.159 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=5. time=0.148 ms
>> 64 bytes from dyn26-1.blueskytours.com (192.168.26.150): icmp_seq=6. time=0.150 ms
>>
>> Also, wget gets good throughput when retrieving files.
>>
>> It just seems to be X traffic which is extremely slow.  Using the old
>> Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC, emacs comes up virtually instantaneously.  Using the
>> integrated Realtek 8111B, emacs takes 10 seconds to draw.
>>
>> Thank you very much for trying to help.
>
> Any chance that the Realtek 8111B is sharing interrupts with another
> device ("cat /proc/interrupts")?  Perhaps it is, and the Linksys isn't,
> which could explain the difference in behavior.  Just something simple
> to check and either rule in or out.


Yes it was, however "fixing" that did not solve the problem.

Thanks for the thought.

John

P.S. I did send the pcap files to Francois Romieu, but I did not CC the list
because they were large.