MB-NG Machines

See the offical MB-NG Website @ http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/mb-ng for more information regarding the MB-NG project.

For the purpose of testing TC/IP Gigabit transfers across the Janet network, two PC’s have been acquired. The of each specs are:

Dell Precision 530 (acquired 15th Jan 2002)
Dual Pentium Xeon 1.7Ghz (100FSB) with 512Mb RAM
The Hard Drive is known to be a Seagate 100ATA <model number>
Standard Redhat 7.2 Installation (installed 15th Jan 2002)
Patched with Web100 alpha1.1 kernel version 2.4.16 (installed 18th April 2002), with Multicast PIM-SM (v1 & v2), ECN and all available QoS modules (supplied with the 2.4.16 kernel) enabled. They also have ipv6 enabled through modules.

The 2.4.16 kernel configuration file for these machines is here.

lspci returns;

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82850 860 (Wombat) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH) (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82860 860 (Wombat) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BAM PCI (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (ICH2) (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 04)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) USB (Hub A) (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) SMBus (rev 04)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) USB (Hub B) (rev 04)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) AC'97 Audio (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 (Geforce2 GTS) (rev a4)
02:1f.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub PCI Bridge (rev 03)
03:00.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (rev 01)
04:0b.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink] (rev 78)
04:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8020

Modifications

The kernel default read and write mem max values for TCP/IP were changed to 8Mbyes to prevent the kernel window sizes constraining transfers involving large window sizes. This was achieved by the following commands;

echo 8388608 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max
echo 8388608 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max

These commands were also put into /etc/rc.local such that upon booting it would default to these values. It may become necessary to increase these sizes for transatlantic transfers to improve transfer rate.

Test results and methods will be published on this page.

Software to be Used

Current software will encompass Web100 transfer tests using custom made ’readvars’ program to monitor TCP-KIS variables. Results of transfer results will be stored on pc35.hep.ucl.ac.uk for web analysis.

On top of the web100 kernel, GridFTP and iperf tests will be conducted to monitor the throughput (link utilisation), jitter, and RTT of each connection. Potential use of NetLogger software (with NetLogger Visualisation) is anticated. TCPDump is also a potential candidate.

Plan for Initial Tests using 100Mbit Transfers.

Back to back transfer between the 2 PC’s will start off the tests. This will be done with the on-board 3COM 3c59x ethernet card supplied with each machine. It is anticipated that transfer rates should be at least 95Mbits/sec with <1msec delay. The connection between the pc’s will be a standard CAT5 cross-over cable.

Analysis of system load (CPU) will be analysed.

Study of TCP features such as Congestion Avoidance and Slow Start will be studied under these idea conditions and compared to a Network Simulator model once the type of TCP used within the 2.4.9 kernel is found.

Plan for Initial Tests using 1Gb Transfers

Equipment NICs to be purchased are Intel 1000 cards in both copper and fibre form.

Installation of GigE NICS

Thanks to the networkind department, we have now got a GigE card in each of the machines. The card is a 3COM 3C996B-T which uses the Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5701 chip set. It uses the bcm5700.o driver which needs to be copied into /lib/module/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/net/

Installation requires setup of the GigE card as eth1 thru linuxconf, using this module. The static IP settings for these NIC's are 192.168.0.{55,56} respectively. Loading up of the module requires the command,

/sbin/insmod bcm5700.o

Running /sbin/lsmod should show this module being used. If this is so, then a simple

/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart

should load the eth1 module.

An /sbin/lspci returns

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82850 860 (Wombat) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH) (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82860 860 (Wombat) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BAM PCI (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (ICH2) (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 04)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) USB (Hub A) (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) SMBus (rev 04)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) USB (Hub B) (rev 04)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) AC'97 Audio (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 (Geforce2 GTS) (rev a4)
02:1f.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub PCI Bridge (rev 03)
03:00.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 82806AA PCI64 Hub Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (rev 01)
03:0c.0 Ethernet controller: BROADCOM Corporation NetXtreme BCM5701 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 15)
04:0b.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX [Fast Etherlink] (rev 78)
04:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8020

Wed, 23 July, 2003 13:07