[vortex] 3c905B and ping delays

[Piotr Kasprzyk]

On Wed, Feb 14, 2001 at 03:49:21PM +0100, Bogdan Costescu wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Piotr Kasprzyk wrote:
> 
> > I searched through the archives but found no answer.
> > I have linux-2.0.38 with driver 0.99H.
> 
> About 2 years ago I used the same combination (well, I think it was
> 2.0.36, but the changes afterwards were very small) with 3C905B
> cards. Under heavy network load, I would sometimes get stalled TCP
> connections. Upgrading to the latest driver (0.99L) at that time, solved
> most of the problems. I think that Don's drivers are backwards compatible,
> so that you can use a recent one (0.99Qk) for your kernel.
> http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html

   I have just recompiled kernel with 0.99Qk driver and started the 
   logging every 60 seconds. I will look at the effects.

> 
> > I exchanged the card from
> > 3c900 Boomerang to 3c905B and I have sometimes large ping delays
> > (about 1000 ms) to the nearest computer on the Ethernet.
> 
> How are your computers connected, through a swicth or a hub ?
> When this starts to happen, all packets have this delay or only some of
> them? If the later is true, how much time (in average) happens between 2
> delayed packets ? Are delayed variable between normal value and the large
> delay or only the extremes (IOW, do you also get delays of 100, 200, 500
> ms, or only 1000 ms) ?

  Switch: 3Com SuperStack II 3300. All packets are delayed. Sometime it looks
  like packets are grouped: for example ping shows rapidly answer to
  5 ping requests with times of 5000ms, 4000ms and so on. The delays are not
  stable.

> Is there any operation that trigger the appearance of the delayed packets?

 I don't see any. The machine is normally loaded with different kinds
 of application (creating ISO images, irc daemons, mail, FTP transfers,
 WWW pages, NetWare server emulator).

> 
> > The temporary fix I use is "ifconfig eth0 down" and later
> > setup the networking again.
> 
> After how much time since boot or the above operation do the delayed
> packets appear ?

 It is about 20 minutes after "ifconfig eth0 down" but it can work seweral
 days without problem.

    I will leave machine for tests for the weekend.

      Thank you for the answer,
       Piotr Kasprzyk