network card with LRO (and TSO) in hardware?

network card with LRO (and TSO) in hardware?

[Octavian Purdila]

Hi,

Can you recommend a network card with LRO/TSO support in hardware which is 
supported in Linux?

And, do you, by any chance, know what is the maximum number of packets per 
second that you can obtain with such a setup?

Thanks,
tavi

Re: network card with LRO (and TSO) in hardware?

[Rick Jones]

Octavian Purdila wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Can you recommend a network card with LRO/TSO support in hardware which is 
> supported in Linux?
> 
> And, do you, by any chance, know what is the maximum number of packets per 
> second that you can obtain with such a setup?

That second bit sounds very much like a "how long is a piece of string" 
question.  What size packets?  What sort of host system(s)?  How many 
concurrent flows/connections etc etc etc...

rick jones

Re: network card with LRO (and TSO) in hardware?

[Octavian Purdila]

On Thursday 29 May 2008, Rick Jones wrote:
>
> That second bit sounds very much like a "how long is a piece of string"
> question.  What size packets?  What sort of host system(s)?  How many
> concurrent flows/connections etc etc etc...
>

No restrictions... Any packet size (though I presume the lower the better), 
any kind of host systems, any number of concurrent flows (though I presume 
the fewer the better). I am just wondering what is the maximum packet rate 
ever seen by somebody, with hardware LRO.

I am asking this because, theoretically, with hardware LRO we should be able 
to achieve a very high packet rate when using a low MTU (like 64 or 128 
bytes). With software LRO I got a significant PPS increase for TCP traffic - 
from 100K (that with terrible hacks - generating traffic from kernel)  to 
140K (that cleanly, from user-space). So I am wondering what the hardware LRO 
will do.

Thanks,
tavi