High throughput bgp links using gentoo + stipped kernel

Sun May 19 15:25:53 UTC 2013

On 5/19/13, Nikola Kolev <nikky at mnet.bg> wrote:
> You might be maxing out your server's PCI bus throughput, so it might be a
> better idea if you can get Ethernet NICs that are sitting at least on PCIe
> x8 slots.
>
>

Nikola, thank you so much for your response! It kind of looks that
way, and we do have another candidate machine that has a PCIe 3 x8.
First thing, I never liked riser card and the candidate IBM x3250 M$
does use them. Not sure how much of a hit I will take for that.
Secondly are there any proven intel 4 port cards in PCIe 3 preferably
pro 1000.

> Leaving that aside, I take it you've configured some sort of CPU/PCI
> affinity?

For interrupts we disabled CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU in the kernel, and
assigned interrupts to the less used core using APIC. I am not sure if
there is anything more we can do?

> As for migration to another OS, I find FreeBSD better as a matter of network
> performance. The last time I checked OpenBSD was either lacking or was in
> the early stages of multiple cores support.

I know I mentioned migration, but gentoo has been really good to us,
and we grew really fond of her :). Hope I can tune it further before
retiring it as our OS of choice.

Nick.