Re: [Bloat] recommended PC config for network testing using Ubuntu

[Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>]

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I was a little unclear - I use the nucs as a my primary linux desktop in 3
different locations, and they are also test clients on the networks I am
testing. They *just work* with all the kernels I build, and the video
driver, in particular, is excellent for day to day use, even with multiple
hires displays. You can bolt them on the back of a monitor that supports
 that, getting rid of unsightly cables. I am always finding a need to have
a 5th usb port, but that is me....

The shorter ones are good if all you need is a half high wifi card and use
an msata hard disk, the taller ones with a sata SSD are way faster and let
you use a full length wifi card.

I do sometimes regret not having got the i5 or better ones, but I offload
major compilations into googles cloud and snapon - or just toss them into
the background - so the speed rarely bothers me on my day to day workloads.

If I were a gamer I would consider something else.

I run ubuntu gnome (various versions) rather than normal ubuntu as I hate
their present gui direction.

While I am dumping my stack about hardware I am huge fan of buckling spring
keyboards
http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/FeaturedProducts/UB40PGA

They have the same nubbie thing that the lenovo laptops have for a mouse
pointer, they are loud enough to annoy co-workers across the room, and they
let me type accurately at insane speeds and flood peoples mailboxes with
email.  :)

The vast majority of the other working parts of my lab are wndr3800, ubnt
picostation, and ubnt nanostation. The beaglebones mostly did not work out,
nor the rasberry pi - too easy to roach the filesystems. I have a ton of
other embedded hardware that didnt work out worse, but to talk about them
requires editing out a lot of epithets. Avoid the globalscale products like
the plague they are in particular - they have ancient kernels and run way
too hot. As already noted, most of the 32 bit arm chips have lousy ethernet
- and most lousy video drivers. The arm64 stuff is starting to work but
havent touched it in a while.

People keep asking me to try out the wandboard, haven´t.

I have a zedboard. no bql, but easy to add. there is really promising work
going on around the zynq FPGA in particular. These guys might be onto
something, but they havent returned my mail with questions about their "35"
product.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onetswitch/onetswitch-open-source-hardware-for-networking

lastly, I meant to include a plot of rangeley´s behavior:

http://snapon.lab.bufferbloat.net/~d/rangeley/fq2fq_vs_pfifo_fast_rangeley.png

it seems impossible to get a modern linux architecture under load down much
below 2ms at gigE at least in part due to context switch overhead. I have a
bit of hope for the dpdk work after the recent preso by stephen at
netconf01.org

/me stops ranting, goes back to work

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