Product

• Brisque^® 5.x
• Brisque 4.x
• Brisque serve

Platform

All Brisque platforms

Operating system

IBM^® AIX^® 4.3.3, 5.2

Symptoms

Slow networking speed in a Gigabit environment.

Solution

There is a big advantage in terms of NFS when using jumbo frames. Using jumbo frames can reduce traffic by 50% and reduce CPU usage by 50%.
Since NFS uses a package size of 8192 bytes, the packages have to be fragmented into 6 packages of 1500 bytes, which is the standard package size.

Prerequisite: a switch supporting jumbo frames, and setting up the complete switch and all network devices connected to the switch.

Notes:

• Many types of switches support jumbo frames, some of which support up to a maximum of 4096 bytes.
• Jumbo frames with a higher MTU cannot coexist with a package size of 1500 bytes on the same network.
• Using jumbo frames has much impact on the entire network. Depending on the specific site configuration, this solution might not be feasible. The customer should consult with a networking specialist before implementing this solution.

Technical contact(s)

Lev Weissman

Submitted by

Frank Conrad

Date submitted

14 Mar 2005