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Conference 7.286::fddi

Title:FDDI - The Next Generation
Moderator:NETCAD::STEFANI
Created:Thu Apr 27 1989
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2259
Total number of notes:8590

1936.0. "fddi counters +20 Unalign 1seg xcopies" by CSC32::T_ABDELLA (Running wild through the mountains) Fri Jan 26 1996 15:23

    
    I work at the CSC in Colorado and one of our customer is having a
    performance problem. They beleave it maybe caused by the FDDI. When the
    customer looks at the counters on two of the ALPHA systems he notices
    +20 Unalign 1seg xcopies and +24 Unalign 2seg xcopies incrementing.
    The values currently are 33144755 and 46533630.
    
    I tried to find an explanation on these two counters but was
    unsuccessful. These are the only two counters that are indicating that
    there maybe a problem on the FDDI. The systems are alpha station 1000 
    with DEFEA controlers, storage works boxes. 
    
    A simplified configuration is each storage works box has a full duplex
    connection to a giga switch. The operating systems are in an fddi 
    ring attached to a port on the gigi switch. 
    
    Any documentation that I could find at the CSC does not explain all 
    the errors that an fddi port may log. I could only find these two errors
    listed in the frdriver listing but there was no explanation as to 
    what they were.  
    
    An explanation of these errors or a pointer to where I could find 
    an explanation would be appreciated. I would like to have an FDDI
    specification manual in the CSC library.
    
    Tony Abdella Networks Support
                                                         
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1936.1NETCAD::STEFANIMachines to humanizeFri Jan 26 1996 17:527
    >>+20 Unalign 1seg xcopies and +24 Unalign 2seg xcopies incrementing.
    >>The values currently are 33144755 and 46533630.
    
    These counters mean nothing to me.  I'd QAR this against the
    device driver you're running.
           
    - Larry
1936.2FRDRIVER version +32895::SLAGLEMon Jan 29 1996 09:4329
    The driver is:
    
    	Image Identification Information
    
    		image name: "SYS$FRDRIVER"
    		image file identification: "X-3"
    		image file build identification: "X61Q-SSB-0000"
    		link date/time: 4-MAY-1995 22:59:21.84
    		linker identification: "All-12"
    
    		SDA> Device name FR_DEFEA
    		SDA> HW version	322E3320
    
       These two counters are are incrementing similarly on two 
    Alphaserver 1000 4/2 machines running VMS 6.2.  These two Alpha boxes
    are part of an HS241 Storageworks FDDI server.  Both Alphas are
    connected point-to-point to GIGAswitch ports and are operating in FDX
    mode.
       The 4 other cluster members are also connected point-to-point to the
    same GIGAswitch but are not operating in FDX mode.  They all run VMS
    6.1 and driver version:
    	"SYS$FRDRIVER"
    	"X-3"
    	"X5SC-SSB-0000"
    	14-APR-1994 11:47:30.53
    	"T11-11"
    and are HW version 322E3436 according to SDA.  This version of the
    driver does not provide these counter fields in the SDA printout. 
    Also, this version of VMS does not enable FDX on the DEFEAs.  
1936.3STAR::STOCKDALEWed Jan 31 1996 11:3017
>>    +20 Unalign 1seg xcopies and +24 Unalign 2seg xcopies incrementing.
>>    The values currently are 33144755 and 46533630.

These counters are merely internal counters that the driver maintains that
are displayed by SDA.  They simply say that the driver was forced to copy
that many transmit packets to aligned transmit buffers to work around a
problem with that revision of the DEFEA which requires longword-aligned
transmit buffers.

To determine if the performance problem the customer sees is caused by
this extra buffer copy, you'll have to give more details why the customer
thinks there is a problem.  The DEFEA can only do about 80 mbits transmit
anyway, and at that transmit rate if all packets are unaligned there is
about a 20% cpu performance hit.  The performance hit is much less under
more typical usage.

- Dick