Hi everyone, This is my first post here so please forgive me/guide me if I have done anything wrong.
I run 12 OpenBSD firewalls, and I have an issue on my highest throughput boxes. I have HP DL160 G6 boxes with Intel ET2 4 port NIC's. I have a problem where I cannot run traffic any faster than ~700Mbit as I am hitting 100% utilisation on the first core due to the giant big lock trying to process the MSI interrupts. The traffic comprises of lots of small payload packets (currently running around 300,000 to 400,000 pps) and I cannot run any faster. I have tunned the boxes as much as possible using information from calomel.org etc and overall we have been extremely happy with them, expect for the performance limits. I understand the devs want to keep the network stack in-house as their are many network cards that simply screw things up, and it is this approach which has given OBSD the stability and security reputation it has. But this approach with the giant big lock limit imposes a hard performance limit for OBSD. But I do also understand that the devs realise this and as a short term solution until the kernel becomes true SMP, they have started to implement ToE and offloading for some NICs :D :) Can you please tell me when ToE support will be added for the Intel series of cards? We are going to have to abandon OBSD if it cannot perform at the throughputs we need but I really want to stay with OBSD? I am not a developer and so cannot contribute myself to any efforts (believe me I would if i could!).. Thanks for your time and a great community. Andy.
