Subject: NAT and general network problems
To: None <tech-net@netbsd.org>
From: R. Braun <syn@sceen.net>
List: tech-net
Date: 08/05/2003 20:23:55
Hello,

My brother recently got a computer for himself. He uses it to download using p2p
applications such as emule. I'm also using those from time to time. The p2p are
behind a NAT router under NetBSD 1.6.1. When we were both using our p2p client
at the same time, it created lots of NAT'ed connections. The server was first
unable to create new connections (originating from itself or from the NAT'ed
hosts) and then got all frozen... I couldn't get any error message. I was
expecting an mb_map error but nothing. netstat -m says 70% is used (I don't
know what is used but it says this ;). I don't see where the problem can come
from. I tried increasing the value NMBCLUSTERS to 8192, but it didn't help.

The router is a small i586 pentium-mmx 166 MHz with 32 MB of EDO DRAM. I'm
pretty sure filter rules are in no way the reason of that problem, since I
haven't changed them for months without any problem.

As I'm running many servers on it as well, the physical memory is always full,
but more than half of the swap (which is 64 MB) remain available.

Please help !! :-). Thanks for any help.

-- 
R. Braun