[vortex] poor network performance.

[Ben Boulton]

In the last month or so our server has been stalling while downloading files.
It is mainly used as a web server although it does dns and mail too.
The stalls are accentuated when our co-location providers network gets busy and
will actually time out at this point. http, mail and ftp all seem effected.

The server has a PIII 733 CPU, 256MB ram is running SuSE 7.0 with
kernel 2.2.16, a 3c905C-tx card and i'am actually using the 3com driver.

Now the server is sometimes getting very little traffic and the stalls still
happen (even with no other http requests.). top can show 100MB free ram, cpu
99% idle and the stalls still happen.

About 6 months ago (the last time the sever was rebooted) we lost complete
connectivity for no apparent reason. The technician at the co-lo facilty said
that the switch was showing 100Mbit and the card 10Mbit. Which straight away
sounded like an auto-negotiate problem. However it hasn't done this since.

This is what the output from mii-diag -v shows:
root@morpheous:/ > mii-diag -v
mii-diag.c:v1.07 10/14/99  Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Using the default interface 'eth0'.
 MII PHY #3072 transceiver registers:
   3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000
   3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000
   3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000
   3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000 3000.
 Basic mode control register 0x3000: Auto-negotiation enabled.
 Basic mode status register 0x3000 ... 3000.
   Link status: not established.
   This transceiver is capable of  100baseTx 10baseT-FD.
   Unable to perform Auto-negotiation, negotiation not complete.

and vortex-diag

root@morpheous:/ > vortex-diag -v
vortex-diag.c:v1.09 7/28/99 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Index #1: Found a 3c905C Tornado 100baseTx adapter at 0x9000.
 Indication enable is 06ee, interrupt enable is 06ee.
 No interrupt sources are pending.
 Transceiver/media interfaces available:  100baseTx 10baseT.
Transceiver type in use:  Autonegotiate.
 MAC settings: full-duplex, 802.1Q flow control.
 Station address set to 00:01:03:c1:56:91.
 Configuration options 4000.
Parsing the EEPROM of a 3Com Vortex/Boomerang:
 3Com Node Address 00:01:03:C1:56:91 (used as a unique ID only).
 OEM Station address 00:01:03:C1:56:91 (used as the ethernet address).
 Manufacture date (MM/DD/YYYY) 11/28/1900, division H, product HN.
Options: none.
  Vortex format checksum is incorrect (0016 vs. 10b7).
  Cyclone format checksum is incorrect (0x86 vs. 0x80).
  Hurricane format checksum is incorrect (0xaf vs. 0x80).
 MII PHY found at address 1, status 0024.
 MII PHY found at address 2, status 0024.
 MII PHY found at address 3, status 0024.
 MII PHY found at address 4, status 0024.
 MII PHY 0 at #1 transceiver registers:
   0000 0024 0000 0000 01e0 4461 0003 0800
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0600 4619 0000 4000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0bef 0000 0000.
 MII PHY 1 at #2 transceiver registers:
   0000 0024 0000 0000 01e0 4461 0003 0800
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0600 4619 0000 4000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0bef 0000 0000.
 MII PHY 2 at #3 transceiver registers:
   0000 0024 0000 0000 01e0 4461 0003 0800
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0600 4619 0000 4000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0bef 0000 0000.
 MII PHY 3 at #4 transceiver registers:
   0000 0024 0000 0000 01e0 4461 0003 0800
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0600 4619 0000 4000 0000 0000 0000 0000
   0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0bef 0000 0000.
 Use '-a' or '-aa' to show device registers,
     '-e' to show EEPROM contents, -ee for parsed contents,
  or '-m' or '-mm' to show MII management registers.

the output from mii-diag is what is worrying me.

Any advice or opinions would be gratefully accepted.