General Questions

Hello,

I am currently using an old Neoware 3000 ThinClient as a m0n0wall. It has a Geode Cyrix III 233Mhz processor which I overclocked a bit to 266Mhz using motherboard jumpers. It has the following interfaces: onboard Realtek 8139 10/100BaseTX (LAN) and Intel 82550 Pro/100 (WAN). I first started using m0n0wall with another Realtek 8139 in the PCI slot (the motherboard has only one), but the throughput was very slow.

The manual told me Realtek cards are known for low throughput, so I bought the Intel Pro/100 card from eBay. Today I started using the new NIC, but the throughput didn't change that much... The WAN card is directly connected to a switched network that gives me around 2400KB/sec without the firewall. With the firewall and my current configuration I get around 950KB/sec. I am using the polling option in the Advanced section and I have also tried switching the cards changing their functions from WAN to LAN and vice versa.

Is the Realtek card such a bottleneck that I can't get higher throughput? If so, would a Intel Pro/100 Dual NIC guarantee to support the full capacity of incoming connection, which is 20Mbit?

Regards,
Taipou

Does anyone have an idea?

Ok, so maybe 'guarantee' is too big of a word. Maybe somebody can tell me the effect of using better quality interfaces, such as the Intel Pro NIC's, in their network. I'm also wondering what the throughput is on CPU's with similar clock rates. Is it possible to get the throughput above 10Mbit on them?

On a 266mh cyrix I doubt you will obtain true 100mbit throughput.

My DSL connection is 20Mbit download/upload, so that will be enough throughput for the firewall. I'm getting about 8Mbit now and I'm wondering if changing the NIC to a Intel Pro/100 DUAL NIC will, let's say, double the throughput. 100Mbit is of course impossible on such a slow CPU, but that's not what I'm looking for.

[dmesg cpu & memory details]

My DSL connection is 20Mbit download/upload, so that will be enough throughput for the firewall. I'm getting about 8Mbit now and I'm wondering if changing the NIC to a Intel Pro/100 DUAL NIC will, let's say, double the throughput. 100Mbit is of course impossible on such a slow CPU, but that's not what I'm looking for.

With my EON4000 it peaks at around 8Mbps, the bottle next seems to be the CPU as it is @ 100%.

dmesg cpu & memory details
CPU: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi (300.68-MHz 586-class CPU)   Origin = "Geode by NSC"  Id = 0x540  Stepping = 0   Features=0x808131<FPU,TSC,MSR,CX8,CMOV,MMX>
real memory  = 130023424 (124 MB)
avail memory = 100917248 (96 MB)

I believe that your CPU and probably the device polling too are causing the bottleneck.

Try disabling the device polling option.
This would probably increase CPU usage in some situations but it might give better networking performance.

Anyhow, the hardware configuration looks quite inferior.