Hi, I use a OpenBSD based firewall (version 5.2, I know I should upgrade but ...) between a 8 host cluster of Linux server and 300 clients which will access this clutser via VNC. Each server is connected with one gigabit port to a dedicated switch and the firewall has on each site one gigabit (dedicated switch and campus network).
The users complains about slow VNC response times (if I connect a client system to the dedicated switch, the access is faster, even during peak hours), and the admins of the cluster blame my firewall :(. I use MRTG for traffic monitoring (data retrieves from OpenBSD in one minute interval) and can see average traffic of 160 Mbit/s during office hours and peaks and 280 Mbit/s. With bwm-ng and a five second interval I can see peaks and 580 Mbit/s. The peak packets per second is arround 80000 packets (also measured with bwm-ng). The interrupt of CPU0 is in peak 25%. So with this data I don't think the firewall is at the limit, I'm right? The server is a standard Intel Xeon (E3-1220V2, 4 Cores, 3.10 GHz) with 4 GByte of memory and 4 1 Gbit/s ethernet cooper Intel nics (driver em). Where is the problem? Can't the nics handle more packets/second? How can I check for this? If I connect a client system directly to the dedicated system, the response times are better. Thanks for your help, Patrick
