Re: i386 home firewall/router/nat bottleneck diagnostics?

[Matthias Kretschmer <kretschm%cs.uni-bonn.de@localhost>]

Hello,

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 03:52:53PM +0100, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 01:57:10PM -0000, yancm%sdf.lonestar.org@localhost 
> wrote:
> I think that 8139 (rtk) is not happy when it has to share its 
> interupt line - e.g. machines with lots of PCI slots.
> 
> The advice is to get a Real Network Card for the inner network,
> too.

I would like to add, that I didn't get 768kbit/s down with a
RTL 8139 (C?) which was solved by replacing it by an intel
nic.  The problem seemed to be that the interrupt handler is too
slow when the interrupt is shared among many devices.  Maybe a
really quick computer would have been able, but mine was not
(VIA C3 600).  I think the problem is, that the realtek 8139
cards have basically no buffer, so if you do not get the
interrupt handled fast, you get a lot of packet loss.  My
advice is to not use it for the cable modem.

You can try to change some settings, such that the 8139
gets an interrupt of its own.  Maybe that speeds things up.

--
Matthias