Debugging Network Performance

[Allen Curtis]

> Netperf can give you a vary detailed report about network performance. If
> you think your problem is related to network hardware problems,
> look at the
> errors listed in "ifconfig". This should tell you if you are getting bad
> packets or dropping packets.

I did fix a problem in the driver and now there are no error reported by
ifconfig.

> If you think it is a kernel problem some benchmarks may help you narrow
> down the problem. Networks are pretty fluid and sometimes hard to get
> reproducible results. When I try to determine driver/kernel network
> perfomance I try to use an isolated network where I have control over all
> traffic or I use test hardware such as IXIA or Smartbits.

All testing is done on an isolated network. I do not believe that the
problem is in the driver itself. The driver has not changed significantly. I
do need to check the error path since it appears that errors actually help
performance.

What is the best way to track packet processing through the kernel?


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/