[Soekris] Benchmark net4801

[Ted Phelps]

"Franck" writes:
> hum 3-4 lines per servers
> accept 80+25+110 + 1to1 nat

The maximum throughput I've been able to obtain between my net4801
(running Linux kernel 2.6.18, which has has NAPI support in the NatSemi
ethernet driver) and another machine is 26 Mbit/s, which was achieved by
downloading a large file from the other machine onto /dev/null on the
net4801.  In this test, iptables is active but it is configured to
accept all traffic from the relevant interface early on.

The best throughput I've seen from one machine through the net4801 to
a third machine (using a similar test) is about half that, so you can
be pretty certain that you'll max out at 13 Mbit/s.

I don't know how much extra overhead NAT will incur, but it will be
noticeable.  HTTP and SMTP traffic are going to have a lot of TCP
connection handshake overhead.  You'll probably be able to push 3 Mbit/s
through it, but there are simply too many variables to say for certain.

Hope that helps,
-Ted