ALIX boards, max throughput?

[Ben Garrison]

Estimates for this hardware are all over the place. What can we expect using Alix boards?

Also, how can we boost throughput?

Device polling (Should we enable?)
TCP offloading features (Should we enable?)

[gderf]

Best I have seen on my old ALIX2C3 was about 90mbps.


I never bothered to try to tune it to do better as once my ISP upgraded my service it was well beyond what 100mbps ethernet ports are capable of regardless of the hardware or OS anyway.


I went with an APU1D4 which has gigabit ports.

[andywhite]

When I first got an alix I tested server to server copies lan to wan and got > 800Mbps at about 80% CPU. 

POLLING and TSO should reduce cpu,  but some nics don't work right with these features enabled. TSO on the alix works fine afaik.

There is also fastforwarding available in advanced options that reduces latency and cpu.  It's not enabled by default as it may break some ipsec things and hasn't had extensive testing in t1n1wall yet

My broadband is 240mbps and at peak I get full speed at <30% CPU

[Ben Garrison]

You sure you mean Alix and not the APU?

I tested this weekend on a fresh install and got a result in the high 80s.

[andywhite]

oops, yes I meant APU , sorry !

ALIX, the nics are only 100Mbps, so 80-90 Mbps sounds right as the maximum throughput

[Ben Garrison]

Yes makes sense due to tcpip overhead. Question is though, is the CPU getting hammered at that throughput or is there enough headroom to run QOS at max line speed.

Peripheral question: How is the heat output of the APU boards? Does the casing get hot to the touch?

[andywhite]

if by QOS you mean the traffic shaper, it should work fine.

are you using 1.10 ? have you tried enabling fastforward to see if it makes any difference ?

the heat on the APU is distributed through the bottom of the case, it acks as a heat sink.  mine is warm, but so is my cable modem   there are some discussions on the internet around APU heat where people did various tests, which will have better data !

[gderf]

APU case temp is warm, but not hot. The heat sink pads are in contact with the case bottom. CPU temp here is reported to be 133 degrees F.