quoted

Fair enough. Is there a tree somewhere I can pull with all those in 
it, or do I need to go back through the emails and apply patches?

You can use my nf-next.git tree from:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kaber/nf-next-2.6.git

It contains the lock free counters, as well as smaller optimizations
from Eric. 

So, by the time this hits inboxes, under:

ftp://ftp.netperf.org/nf-next-2.6-results

should be a directory called "baseline" which are the results from just a clone 
of your tree from earlier today.  There you will find the config file, the log of 
the build and then three subdirectories:

none - results without doing iptables --list
empty - results after doing iptables --list
full - results after doing an iptables-restore of a config from the "iptables" 
file also up there

In each will be the netperf results in csv format, and four different caliper 
(using the perfmon interface) profiles:

"cycles" uses a profile which is able to take samples with interrupts disabled
"fprof" is a plain flat profile that does not see things happening with interrupt 
s disabled - comparing an fprof to cycles is sometimes interesting
"dcache" tries to take cache miss profiles. iirc that uses the data ear in the 
Itanium PMU to do its thing - I cannot recall the effect of interrupt disabling there
"scgprof" is a sampled call graph profile - likely as not with interrupt 
limitations similar to those of an fprof profile.

The last timer patch I've seen missed the actual conversion
to use mod_timer_pending(), but it would be great to have some numbers
on the conntrack lock changes. Thanks Rick!

I will go back through my email now and try to find the conntrack lock changes 
and apply them to the tree and turn the crank.

happy benchmarking

rick jones