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Re: [PATCHES] 2.4.x net driver updates

To: "J.A. Magallon" <jamagallon@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [PATCHES] 2.4.x net driver updates
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 18:34:10 -0400
Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, linux-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, netdev@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20030617222750.GE13990@werewolf.able.es>
Organization: none
References: <20030612194926.GA7653@gtf.org> <20030617222750.GE13990@werewolf.able.es>
Sender: netdev-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021213 Debian/1.2.1-2.bunk
J.A. Magallon wrote:
On 06.12, Jeff Garzik wrote:

BK users may issue a

        bk pull bk://kernel.bkbits.net/jgarzik/net-drivers-2.4

Others may download the patch from

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/patchkits/2.4/2.4.21-rc8-netdrvr2.patch.bz2



Any info about the RX_POLLING (NAPI) option for e1000 ?
What is that for ?


NAPI enables a software polling mode, or software interrupt migitation if you prefer to call it that. It kicks in at moderate to high packet rates, allows the net stack to more globally balance net traffic, and avoids problems associated with high packet load / DoS situations which would otherwise max out a cpu.

But it's a new feature, so being conservative there is a staged rollout, with NAPI support in e100[0] being an option that can be turned off. Some drivers like tg3 simply always enable NAPI.

        Jeff



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