Ethernet Device Polling for OpenBSD

Contributed by jose on 2002-12-05 from the yet-another-tedu-kernel-patch dept.

TedU has created yet another cool kernel patch. This one deals with ethernet device polling . As stated on the website, Polling helps prevent livelock when the machine starts receving packets at a high rate. Interrupts, especially one per packet, increase the time spent processsing each packet. Interrupts are more efficient for slower packet rates, however, so you don't waste time polling for packets which don't exist. To use: enable option DEVICE_POLLING and rebuild kernel.
Sounds like high performance networking users should check this out. As always, this is an unofficial patch and could cause massive system instability and is unsupported by the official project.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

By Anonymous Coward () on 2002-12-05 06:54

Is it the RX polling metioned here ?
By Ed White () - on 2002-12-05 14:48 http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/polling/

The author of the porting should say "i'm only porting, the idea isn't mine".
And add a link to original code/author.

Posts:
(http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=24840+0+archive/2001/freebsd-net/20011209.freebsd-net)

(http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=326556+0+archive/2001/freebsd-net/20011028.freebsd-net)

Thanks.
By Joel () on 2002-01-25 20:59

Hello,

Forgive me if this is an ignant question, but why can't they combine the two practices, e.g. use interrupts when the network load is below a certain point and device polling when the load increases?

My understanding of this kernel patch is that polling will be used to the exclusion of interrupts for network packets.

Latest Articles

Thu, Apr 18
- 05:05 Coming soon to a -current system near you: parallel raw IP input (0)
Wed, Apr 17
- 05:33 In -current, default write format for tar(1) changed to "pax" (9)
Wed, Apr 10
- 18:50 OpenSMTPD 7.5.0p0 Released (2)
Tue, Apr 09
- 04:49 20 years since "and we're just starting": undeadly.org turns 20 (2024-04-09) (13)
Fri, Apr 05
- 06:16 OpenBSD 7.5 released (2)
Thu, Mar 28
- 18:18 LibreSSL 3.8.4 and 3.9.1 released (0)
Tue, Mar 12
- 06:53 OpenSSH 9.7/9.7p1 released! (0)
Mon, Mar 11
- 11:28 Game of Trees 0.97 released (0)
Sun, Mar 10
- 09:06 LibreSSL versions 3.8.3 and 3.9.0 released (0)

Credits

Copyright © 2004-2008 Daniel Hartmeier. All rights reserved. Articles and comments are copyright their respective authors, submission implies license to publish on this web site. Contents of the archive prior to April 2nd 2004 as well as images and HTML templates were copied from the fabulous original deadly.org with Jose's and Jim's kind permission. This journal runs as CGI with httpd(8) on OpenBSD, the source code is BSD licensed. undeadly \Un*dead"ly\, a. Not subject to death; immortal. [Obs.]