Re: [TCLUG:7650] High Ping Times and Dropped Packets

[Scot Jenkins <swjenkins@ibm.net>]

> 
> Hi, 
> 
> I'm running Slackware 4.0 on a machine with two Pentium 133s. I performed
> a fresh install a week ago and had everything running perfectly. 
> 
> Yesterday I thought I'd try recompiling my kernel to include SMP support.
> I also compiled the driver for my scsi card (and Adaptec 2940) into the
> kernel. The machine also has two network card in it, a 3c905b (eth1) and a
> 3c503 (eth0). I load those as modules. 
> 
> Since I've compiled the kernel I've been getting really poor performance
> out of the 3c503. When I do an ifconfig, it shows that it is dropping a
> lot of packets for rx, 1614 for eth0 compared to none for eth1. The ping
> times are also pretty bad, when I try to ping my internal machines the
> time shows 9628.2 ms. Before the recompile it was about 200 ms. 
> 
> One thing I've had to change was that to load the module for the 3c503, I
> have to do "modprobe 3c503 io=0x300 irq=9". I used to just do "modprobe
> 3c503", but it seems like if I don't do it the new way the scsi card takes
> the irq address the 3c503 wants. 

have you set the address on the card using the 3com DOS program INSTALL.EXE?
turn off P-n-P when you run the 3com configure program.

have you tried an append line in /etc/lilo.conf?  something like this:

	append="eth0=0x300,10" 	# 3com at adddr 0x300, IRQ 10

don't forget to rerun lilo if you make changes:

	/sbin/lilo -v

this probably won't help your ping times, but I found it solved address
detection problems for me, as always YMMV.

-- 
Scot W. Jenkins
mailto:swjenkins@ibm.net