Dropping Packets in 2.6.17

[Danial Thom <danial_thom@yahoo.com>]

I'm trying to make a case for using linux as a
network appliance, but I can't find any
combination of settings that will keep it from
dropping packets at an unacceptably high rate.
The test system is a 1.8Ghz Opteron with intel
gigE cards running 2.6.17. I'm passing about 70K
pps through the box, which is a light load, but
userland activities (such as building a kernel)
cause it to lose packets, even with backlog set
to 20000. I had the same problem with 2.6.12 and
abandoned the effort. Has anything been done
since to give priority to networking? You can't
have a network appliance drop packets when some
application is gathering stats or a user is
looking at a graph. What tunings are available?

DT


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