Broadcom NetXtremeII Packet Loss/PE1950

[Patrick Schreurs]

Hi Matt,

Is TOE enabled in the BIOS? I've seen improvements by removing the TOE key.

Good luck,

Patrick Schreurs

Matt Saladna wrote:
> Hi,
> 	Has anyone noticed sporadic packet loss with the BCM5708 NICs on Linux?
>  I have been attempting to track down the root cause, but everything is
> turning up empty.
> 
> The symptoms are once every few hundred HTTP requests or so, there will
> be a timeout; same goes for DNS resolution.  It looks like any TCP or
> UDP request has a 1 in 30 or so chance of abruptly timing out on this
> card.  I have been testing by running a lookup query to 4.2.2.1 and
> averaging out trip times with the following script:
> 
> ( set -o pipefail ; let COUNT=0 ; RET=0 ; until [ $RET -ne 0 -o $COUNT
> -gt 1000 ] ; do dig +short +trace @4.2.2.1 google.com | grep 'from
> server' | awk '{print $7}' ; RET=$? ; ((COUNT++)) ; done ) | awk '{ SUM
> += $1; COUNT += 1; } END { print SUM/COUNT, COUNT }' ; clock
> 
> Three of the servers running CentOS 4 with the BCM5708 chipset die
> within the first 30 queries:
> 
> dig: couldn't get address for 'H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET': not found
> 722.948 77
> 
> Two of the three servers are running the official 2.6.22.1 kernel, while
> another is running on 2.6.24-rc6.  There is a fourth server, a PE SC1435
> with the Broadcom BCM5721 chipset, which performs the lookups
> flawlessly.  All four servers are on the same switch in the facility
> effectively ruling out network issues on the uplink.  I removed the TOE
> from one of the troubled PE1950s last weekend, but that hasn't affected
> packet loss.  Packet loss occurs independent of any offload settings
> made via ethtool.  I have turned all of the parameters off and on with
> no success.
> 
> Finally, just for kicks, I decided to run the DNS lookup test on a
> development machine with a mirror image of the filesystem.  I'm running
> 2.6.22.2 with Via's VT6102 (Rhine-II) embedded NIC.  This works without
> a problem either.
> 
> Thanks!
>    Matt Saladna
>    Apis Networks
> 
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