RE: Debugging Network Performance

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?


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