Intel Pro/1000 in a Qube2 observations

[Mark Smith <markinnz%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hi there,

Since things appear to be working with this board I've done a few rough tests 
with some interesting results (only 100BaseT results at the moment as thats all 
my current router/hub supports)

1)  By default the hardware checksums are not enabled ... which seems kind of 
odd you can see the before and after here :

        Before:
        qube2# ifconfig -v wm0
                wm0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
                
capabilities=2bf80<TSO4,IP4CSUM_Rx,IP4CSUM_Tx,TCP4CSUM_Rx,TCP4CSUM_Tx,UDP4CSUM_Rx,UDP4CSUM_Tx,TCP6CSUM_Tx,UDP6CSUM_Tx>
                enabled=0
                address: 00:15:17:0e:b8:e2
                media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX 
full-duplex,flowcontrol,rxpause,txpause)
                status: active
                input: 556569 packets, 42363982 bytes, 410 multicasts
                output: 922440 packets, 1358364969 bytes, 7 multicasts
                inet 192.168.0.7 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
                inet6 fe80::215:17ff:fe0e:b8e2%wm0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2

        then run :  ifconfig wm0 ip4csum tcp4csum udp4csum

        After:
        qube2# ifconfig -v wm0
                wm0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
                
capabilities=2bf80<TSO4,IP4CSUM_Rx,IP4CSUM_Tx,TCP4CSUM_Rx,TCP4CSUM_Tx,UDP4CSUM_Rx,UDP4CSUM_Tx,TCP6CSUM_Tx,UDP6CSUM_Tx>
                
enabled=3f00<IP4CSUM_Rx,IP4CSUM_Tx,TCP4CSUM_Rx,TCP4CSUM_Tx,UDP4CSUM_Rx,UDP4CSUM_Tx>
                address: 00:15:17:0e:b8:e2
                media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX 
full-duplex,flowcontrol,rxpause,txpause)
                status: active
                input: 1360390 packets, 103713904 bytes, 467 multicasts
                output: 2265678 packets, 3334149173 bytes, 7 multicasts
                inet 192.168.0.7 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
                inet6 fe80::215:17ff:fe0e:b8e2%wm0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
 
2)  If I read a large file from the Qube2 with the checksums disabled I can get 
4.5Mb/s sustained.  If I enable the checksums I get 5.9Mb/s sustained (so worth 
enabling)

3)  If I copy a large file with the checksums disabled the NFS connection WILL 
drop off, disconnect and basically break!  If I enable the checksums it seems 
to stay up. (so REALLY worth enabling)

        But why should the connection break ?  From my OSX client I have 
mounted with the following options : 

                resvport locallocks rsize=32768 wsize=32768 intr noatime

4)  CLI responsiveness is far more sluggish when the hardware checksums are 
enabled than when they are disabled ... which doesn't really make sense either 
?!


Does anyone have some decent NFS tuning tips ?  I'd like to get good 
performance on the Qube but not at the expensive of other apps running on it.

Thanks!

Mark

PS.  I still can't get the Intel board to work at all in the Qube3, so it's 
staying in the Qube2 regardless :-)