Re: Route cache performance under stress

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Simon Kirby wrote:

"vmstat 1") except in attack cases.  The difference is probably just the
fact that this is running on slightly faster hardware (single Athlon
1800MP, Tyan Tiger MPX board).

What happened to Linux users being able to brag about how much they could
do with CPUs that were useless for running Windows?  On a 1Ghz CPU you've
got almost 7,000 cycles to route a packet in order to handle 148kpps.  I
can't see why the slow path should be more than 2,000 cycles.

I know some people's attitude is don't talk if you're not going to write
the code.  If I had the time I would; from my earliest days of programming
I've been optimizing performance to the maximum.  I can still remember
using page 0 on my c64 to store an 8-bit register in 3 cycles instead of
four...

So to put a stake in the ground, I'd like to see a 1Ghz celeron with e1000
cards handle 148kpps of DOS traffic at <50% CPU utilization (with full
routing tables & no firewalling).  If that's not a reasonable expectation,
someone please let me know.  Even if my time was only worth $500/day, in
the past year and a half I spent enough time working on Linux routers to
buy a Cisco NPE-G1. :-(

-Ralph