To use the ne drivers, change in the directory /lib/modules/2.4.21-24108-default/kernel/drivers/net/e100 or e1000 and move the module e.100/0_asl.o in the directory /lib/modules/2.4.21-24108-default/kernel/drivers/net. Then edit the file /etc/modules.conf and change the modul for your cards. In that directory you also find the currently loaded modules. bagira
and what is "NAPI"?, i've googled but only found the word, nothing describing what it does.
i've also found something interesting in a PDF, one that says that the new driver changed a lot of thing that where previously done by hardware to the SW "because processors and IO are fast enough"(they think that 3GHz CPU grow from trees for free...), one of those is TCP checksum(that 8255x series can offload). I'd rather leave everything that can be offloaded offloaded, it provides much better performance.
In the 2.4 kernel, every packet that is received of the network triggers the driver of the network card to send an interrupt to the kernel, which than stops processing of his actual task, talks to the driver, receives the packet, processes it, and than goes on where he were. If there is a situation where you receive a massive amount of packets, like 250.000 packets/sec or more, the kernel is completly occupied by receiving packts has no time to do anything else than that, not even sending out other packets. This leads to a non working machine.
Interrupt Mitigation In order to improve this behavior, a new mechanism called IM has been introduced, which does not interrupt the kernel every packet, but only for every 10th or 20th packet. This improves but not fixes this issue.
NAPI In order to fix this limitation, the kernel 2.6 has a complete New API for the networking drivers called 'NAPI'. Napi uses a special interrupt handling combindes with polling mode to not lock up the kernel under heavy packet load.
This NAPI implementation has been backported to the 2.4 kernel and integrated into ASL to improve the behavior under heavy packet load.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of NAPI.
regarding the changes in the driver, the linux kernel does always check IP/TCP checksums and a lot of other checks, which can not be disabled. Therefore those checks have been done twice, this is why intel removed it from the driver.
i c.. i c... interesting(and amazing that a feature that lurks in windows from ages ago just now found it's way into linux)
well since i don't have that much load i'll wait for a more easy "un-hacky" installation of the new drivers, maybe we'll see a "checkbox" or an option in the installation to choose the new driver in the future.
i c.. i c... interesting(and amazing that a feature that lurks in windows from ages ago just now found it's way into linux)
well since i don't have that much load i'll wait for a more easy "un-hacky" installation of the new drivers, maybe we'll see a "checkbox" or an option in the installation to choose the new driver in the future.
