On 03 Mar 2005 16:24:25 -0500
jamal [off-list ref] wrote:

Ok, this does sound more reasonable. Out of curiosity, are packets being
dropped at the socket queue? Why is "dump till empty" behaviour screwing
over TCP.

Because it does the same thing tail-drop in routers do.
It makes everything back off a lot and go into slow start.
If we'd just drop 1 packet per flow or something like that
(so it could be fixed with a quick fast retransmit), TCP
would avoid regressing into slow start.

You say "use a NAPI driver", but netif_rx() _IS_ a NAPI driver.
process_backlog() adheres to quotas and every other stabilizing
effect NAPI drivers use, the only missing part is the RX interrupt
disabling.

We should eliminate the max backlog thing completely.  There is
no need for it.