On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 09:10:05AM +0200, Per-Olov SjC6holm wrote:
> If you please will explain how "baddynamic" and avoiding certain ports will
> affect what we are talking about...
>
> Naaahh lets forget that section
I believe people are referring to the text above that:
One goal of OpenBSD is to have the system Just Work for the vast
majority of our users. Twisting knobs you don't understand is far more
likely to break the system than it is to improve its performance. Always
start from the default settings, and only adjust things you actually see
a problem with.
VERY FEW people will need to adjust any networking parameters!
Earlier you asked:
> So the question remains. Is it likely that a faster cpu core will give
> better performance (not that I need it. Just doing some laborations
> here). Is a faster CPU the best / only way to increase throughput.
Yes, all other things being equal faster CPU will help. Other hardware factors
include:
- CPU vendor (AMD vs Intel)
- CPU cache, bus, chipset
- PCI bus
- Network card
- If you are doing IPSec, AES-specific instructions ("AES-NI" on Intel)
Some CPU architectures have much better IO and interrupt performance for
a given clock speed (Sparc64, for example), but cost makes them an
unlikely choice for a firewall.
Things that seem to make very little difference in testing:
- MP vs SP kernel
- i386 vs AMD64
> Of course we assume the OS tweak is ok and that reasonable
> NIC:s are used.
OS tweaks are usually not OK. The general rule of thumb is that if you
have to ask about them on misc@ because there is no documentation and
you don't understand the effects, then you shouldn't touch it
PF configuration can have a big effect on your performance for some
types of traffic. In general it's better to worry about making your
ruleset correct and maintainable, but if you MUST write your ruleset
with performance in mind, the following article discusses most of the
issues:
http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20060927091645
> Is there a plan to change the interrupt handling model in OpenBSD to
> device polling in future releases ?
No.
