(Sorry about the multiple posts. I somehow sent this without a subject line before.)
Never mind. Nobody's perfect. ;)
To sum up your problem, you tested "FreeBSD 5.3, NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 4.11 and an elder version of the Knoppix (Linux 2.4) CD" and found that FreeBSD 4.11RC2 had the best ping responses from that group. What you want to know is why FBSD 5.3 doesn't respond as well as 4.11RC2. Is this correct?
You got me right.
Assuming that it is, the answer is that 5.3 is the first stable release of the 5.x branch. One of the 5.x branch's main purposes is to make FBSD much more scalable in terms SMP support. Doing this requires removing the Giant lock. It had been hoped that the removal process would be finished in time for 5.3. Unfortunately, as often happens in a volunteer project delays occurred for various reasons, that was not the case. The incomplete removal meant that not all subsystems could be optimized properly. One of those subsystems is networking. This is not as bad as it sounds because while 5.3's network performance is not as good as 4.11RC2, it is no worse that of NBSD 2.0 or any Linux distro. Also, the optimization has already begun on networking and 5.4 should be _at least_ as good as 4.x. Also, as you saw yourself, using an SMP kernel in FBSD 5.3 doesn't cause a performance hit in networking but it does in NBSD 2.0. So your choices seem to be use 4.11RC2 (full release due shortly) to get the best network response, 5.3 to get as good performance as NBSD 2.0 but with SMP, or use NBSD 2.0 to get as good perfomance as 5.3 but without SMP. Of course, you can wait until NBSD (your prefered OS) performs as well as FBSD, but that may be a loooonng time.:)
Just a few day ago i installed NetBSD 2.0 to make a final stroke to my decision as i got this computer on the 16. of november. Main advantage in my opinion is that raidframe performs better than vinum (at least with my setup and with the tests i performed). There are some other topics but mainly subjective and not the matter of this email. I guess i'm going to stick with it, developers and time will do the rest for me. :)
But what's most important is that your mail gave me the confidence that my hardware isn't faulty. It's also very nice that you shed some light on the that whole network subject.
P.S. (to the list in general) Why do all of the questions about FBSD performance, especially 4.x vs 5.x, come from people posting from Windows boxes? Theories?
In my case i'm using windows because it's pre-installed on the laptop i use and i never had luck with *bsd/linux on the desktop (and especially laptops). Did you ever recognize the difference between Firefox/Mozilla Browser for Windows and the versions für FreeBSD? Even only compiled with GTK1 Firefox/Mozilla will load the cpu up to 100% when there are some tabs (>10-20) opened. I know that this is a matter of unsupported graphic cards with X.org (that whole proprietary stuff annoys me a lot..) but i don't want to suffer for my beliefs. If there only would be ratpoison or xfce for windows..
Well, enough said. (Maybe i'll make some space free for FreeBSD 5.3 to give a try but i'm not to optimistic that it will suffice my needs)
Thanks for your kind assistance and best regards,
Jochen Keil _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
