Re: [PATCHES] 2.4.x net driver updates

J.A. Magallon wrote:

On 06.12, Jeff Garzik wrote:

quoted

BK users may issue a

bk pull bk://kernel.bkbits.net/jgarzik/net-drivers-2.4

Others may download the patch from

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/patchkits/2.4/2.4.21-rc8-netdrvr2.patch.bz2

Any info about the RX_POLLING (NAPI) option for e1000 ?
What is that for ?

NAPI enables a software polling mode, or software interrupt migitation if you prefer to call it that.  It kicks in at moderate to high packet rates, allows the net stack to more globally balance net traffic, and avoids problems associated with high packet load / DoS situations which would otherwise max out a cpu.

But it's a new feature, so being conservative there is a staged rollout, with NAPI support in e100[0] being an option that can be turned off. Some drivers like tg3 simply always enable NAPI.

	Jeff