Dell Intel PRO Family of Adapters - Manual (Page 108)

Parameter Name Valid
Range/Settings
Default Description
NOTES:
l Dynamic interrupt throttling is only applicable to
adapters operating in MSI or Legacy interrupt
mode, using a single receive queue.
l When ixgbevf is loaded with default settings
and multiple adapters are in use sim-
ultaneously, the CPU utilization may increase
non-linearly. In order to limit the CPU utilization
without impacting the overall throughput, it is
recommended to load the driver as follows
modprobe ixgbevf Inter-
ruptThrottleRate-
e=3000,3000,3000
This sets the InterruptThrottleRate to 3000 inter-
rupts/sec for the first, second, and third
instances of the driver. The range of 2000 to
3000 interrupts per second works on a majority
of systems and is a good starting point, but the
optimal value will be platform-specific. If CPU
utilization is not a concern, use default driver
settings.
NOTES:
l For more information about the InterruptThrottleRate parameter, see the application note at http://www.in-
tel.com/design/network/applnots/ap450.htm .
l A descriptor describes a data buffer and attributes related to the data buffer. This information is accessed
by the hardware.
Additional Configurations
Configuring the Driver on Different Distributions
Configuring a network driver to load properly when the system is started is distribution dependent. Typically, the con-
figuration process involves adding an alias line to /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf as well as editing other sys-
tem startup scripts and/or configuration files. Many Linux distributions ship with tools to make these changes for you. To
learn the proper way to configure a network device for your system, refer to your distribution documentation. If during
this process you are asked for the driver or module name, the name for the Linux Base Driver for the Intel® 10 Gigabit
PCI Express Family of Adapters is ixgbevf.
Viewing Link Messages
Link messages will not be displayed to the console if the distribution is restricting system messages. In order to see net-
work driver link messages on your console, set dmesg to eight by entering the following:
dmesg -n 8
NOTE: This setting is not saved across reboots.
ethtool
The driver uses the ethtool interface for driver configuration and diagnostics, as well as displaying statistical inform-
ation. The latest ethtool version is required for this functionality.
The latest release of ethtool can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel .