Using BSD/386 for routing

[Ivo Cernohlavek <ivos@muni.cz>]

Hi,

> From matuo@rop2.hitachi-cable.co.jp Fri Sep 16 03:16:50 1994
> 
> Hello,
> 
> >> > I was playing with using a 1.0 box as a router,
> >> 
> >> We are using BSD/386 heavily for this purpose at our University
> >> (more than 15 such boxes in our metropolitan network), and it works great.
> >> 
> >> But I recommend upgrade to 1.1, it has much better throughput
> >> (and better than CISCO AGS+ !!!) and many other advantages.
> 
> We are also using 1.1 box as a router.
> But its throughput is no better than CISCO AGS+.

To be more exact, my AGS+ has CSC3 procesor (68020) and 4096K memory.
I have 6-port MEC Ethernet board - with C-bus interface - inside.

What's your configuration?

I have several serial cards inside too. But the trafic on the serial
lines is very low, compared to trafic on ethernets.
Although I had to measure throughput in real network environment,
with real trafic, I made the measurements usually at night,
when the trafic was as low as possible. Of course, I repeated the measurements
many times, to eliminate influence by random trafic. Yes, the results
may still be biased, but ...

> Its forwarding rate was only about 3,600 pps by 64-byte IP packet,
> and about 500 pps by 1518-byte IP packet.
> I think CISCO AGS+ can forward about 15,000 pps by 64-byte IP packet,
> and about 800 pps by 1518-byte IP packet.

Well, maybe I'm using too stupid measuring methods. I can't report
such numbers, as how much packets per second I'm able to forward.
I have no special hardware or software for such tests.

Please, could you give me some advice, if there is some freely
available, good testing software for testing router throughput ?
( No my boss will not buy me some special, expensive testing
HW or SW ).


> When we measured the throughput, our box had only 2 ethernet cards, 1
> IDE HDD, 1 FDD.
> I think neither HDD nor FDD was accessed at the measurement time.
> 
> Our Machine is
> 	Motherboard: ASUS PCI/I-486SP3
> 	CPU:I486DX2/66
> 	Ethernet card: SMC Ultra (x2)

And my:

DTK, 40MHz 386, 4MB RAM, 64k cache, 4-5 SMC Ultra cards.
Results with 386SX were not much worse.


> 
> How did you measure your throughput ?


I had connected 4 ethernet segments in our bulding to AGS+ or to the PC.
In case of AGS+, there were some serial lines connected too, but as I
mentioned above, with very low trafic.

I measured the throughput very simply, by transfering "real" data
through the router - between workstations connected to the
ethernet segments, using:

1. a) program tcpblast - a simple program sending data through TCP
   to discard port of another machine, as fast as possible.
   b) program tcpping - the same, but echo port is used instead
   and data is returned back and received.

2. NFS (over UDP)  transfer of a long file, between two hosts.
   I used a file 6151372 bytes long in all my tests.

I tested transfer between one pair of hosts ( so 2 ethernet port was
used ) and betwen two pairs of hosts - each host on different ethernet
interface.

I had not enough time to make some report of all these measurements.
Maybe, most interestenig will be results with NFS, because it
loads the router most heavily.

When transfering data between two SUN SPARCs (sun4m, Slaris 2.3 )
through PC, maximal throughput was about 840000bytes/s .

When transfering the same through CISCO, maximal throughput was
only about 490000bytes /s ! .

Throughput between SUNs over local segments, max. throughput
was about 918000 bytes/s .


Evaluation of the test with two pairs of machine is difficult, because
the second pair of machines was slower, then the pair mentioned
above, it was able to transfer up to 540000 bytes per second
through PC and about 500000bytes through CISCO, in "single pair" test.
While running the transfers together, I was able to transfer
about 680000 bytes/s  ( 1. pair) plus 440000 bytes/s (2. pair) through
PC , and about 370000 bytes/s plus 310000 bytes/s  through CISCO.


> I can guess you used SMC Ultra by your previous post.
> >> 
> >> I prefer SMC Ultra. It is faster then 3C509, under BSD/386
> >> and probably with less problems.
> 
> But what machine did you use ?
> Could you please tell me your box's throuput and how you configure
> your PC ?

As far as I know, I'm doing nothing very special with my configuration.




Best regards,                         Ivo Cernohlavek, ivos@muni.cz