IRQ, network drivers, and the like...

[Carter Bullard]

Hey Chris,
   Do you mean interrupts per second?  I can understand how the
card could generate (3 x (the number of packet)) interrupts.
Start of bus transfer, end of bus transfer, and specific device
handler interrupt, but this is just a guess, I don't really
know.  Possibly Peter will have a real educated guess as to
what is going on, and knowing him, possibly a way around it.

Carter

Carter Bullard
QoSient, LLC
300 E. 56th Street, Suite 18K
New York, New York  10022

carter at qosient.com
Phone +1 212 588-9133
Fax   +1 212 588-9134
http://qosient.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Newton [mailto:newton at unb.ca] 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 1:57 PM
> To: carter at qosient.com
> Subject: IRQ, network drivers, and the like...
> 
> 
> Hi Carter,  how have you been?
> 
>   I'm struggling with a weird problem and I thought maybe you 
> might have seen 
> this before, or be able to point me in the right direction.
> 
>   One of the networks I'm watching (my big network), has (for 
> example), about 
> 5000 incoming packets and 5000 outgoing right now... works 
> out to about 2MB in 
> both directions.  That is fed into an argus box, via 1 
> cable... so, 10K 
> packets per second on the cable.
> 
>   Whats weird.. is that right now, my network card is 
> generating about 26 to 
> 30,000 packets/second.  I feel this is bogging the machine... 
> and I dont know 
> why it might be doing that.  Argus is running, reading from 
> that interface.
> 
>   The card is a 3Com, 3c980 (or something)... but, Im not 
> sure that matters... 
> because I swapped it for a intel etherner express pro, and I 
> had the same 
> problem... (even higher actually).  There is also an ra 
> client reading from 
> the localargus stream.
> 
>   Weird.. but, do you have any ideas?
> 
>