Re: 2.4.12-ac4 10Mbit NE2k interrupt load kills p166

[Martin Josefsson]

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Alan Cox wrote:

> > On Thu, Oct 25, 2001 at 11:30:18PM +0400, Samium Gromoff wrote:
> > >        Hello folks...
> > > 
> > > 	Host A: p166, ISA NE2K, linux-2.4.12-ac4
> > > 	Host B: p2-400, rtl-8129, WinXP (heh, not my box though ;)
> > > 
> > > 	Load: smbmount connection from host A to the host B, and getting
> > >      large files.
> > 
> > Solution: replace NE2K with a decent network card.
> 
> The ne2k driver goes to great pains to keep interrupts enabled it isnt the
> culprit as far as I can tell

I had an AMD K6 200 with an ISA NE2K card whan I started using Linux...
I started using kernel 2.0 and that card worked very nice.
I could even play quake while sending out data at 10Mbit/s, I didn't even
notice that the transfer had started.

Then I upgraded to kernel 2.2 and I was no longer able to play quake while
tranmitting at 10Mbit/s with the exact same hardware. Sometimes I could
hardly even play mp3's :(

Then a friend of mine that also upgraded to kernel 2.2 began complaining
that his machine also became extremely slow and unresponsive while
transitting at 10Mbit/s, in fact that machine was even slower than mine
during the transfers and his cpu was a bit faster than mine (also AMD).

Then I upgraded that machine to pIII 700 and even that machine slows to a
crawl while transmitting with that bloody ISA NE2K. It's the same thing in
kernel 2.4 too. These days I simply don't use that card anymore...

So something seems to have taken a wrong turn between 2.0 and 2.2
I don't think this is a problem intruduced in 2.4.

/Martin

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.