On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 06:55, Chris Buechler <cbuechler at gmail dot com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Stefan Ott <stefan at ott dot net> wrote:
>> Hey
>>
>> I recently noticed a strange behaviour with m0n0wall 1.33 running on a
>> PC Engines WRAP. It seems that whenever the network throughput (tried
>> with http and ftp) gets close to my connection's maximum (which is
>> around 25 Mbps) the system becomes extremely unresponsive and won't do
>> anything else anymore - DNS lookups fail and even wifi connections get
>> terminated. A quick look at the CPU load graph shows that it's very
>> close to 100%.
>>
>
> At 25 Mbps, you're pushing everything you're going to get through a
> WRAP. Things are going to get unresponsive at that point, you're going
> to start dropping packets, etc. Enabling polling won't really help,
> it'll at least keep userland processes on the system from being
> overwhelmed by interrupt load, but it will slightly reduce the amount
> of throughput you can get and increase latency. Really need a faster
> box than a 233 or 266 MHz Geode at 25+ Mbps.

:(

But thanks a lot for the answers, I honestly didn't expect some minor
routing and NATting to use that much CPU power. Guess it's time to go
shopping then!

On a related note, does anyone happen to know whether the ALIX boards
(500 MHz Geode) have enough power to be reasonably future proof? Or is
it a simple linear thing, i.e. I'll have the same issues on an ALIX
once I hit 50 Mbps?

cheers
-- 
Stefan Ott
http://www.ott.net/

"You are not Grey Squirrel?"