FreeBSD Set Network Polling To Boost Performance

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In FreeBSD, network polling can be used to improve network performance by reducing the amount of time spent processing interrupts. Polling is a technique where the network interface card (NIC) periodically checks the network for incoming packets instead of generating interrupts for each incoming packet.

Here are the steps to set network polling in FreeBSD:

  1. Edit the /boot/loader.conf file:
    vi /boot/loader.conf
  2. Add the following lines to enable polling for the network interfaces:
    kern.polling.enable="1"
    net.inet.tcp.hostcache.hashsize="4096"
    dev.em.0.rx_processing_limit="-1"
    dev.em.0.rx_processing_mode="polling"

    Replace em with the network interface name. You can find the network interface name by running the ifconfig command.

    The dev.em.0.rx_processing_limit parameter sets the maximum number of packets that can be processed in a single polling interval. Setting this to -1 means there is no limit.

    The dev.em.0.rx_processing_mode parameter sets the processing mode to polling.

    The net.inet.tcp.hostcache.hashsize parameter sets the size of the TCP host cache hash table.

  3. Reboot the system for the changes to take effect:
    reboot

After the system reboots, the network interfaces will use polling for incoming packets, which should improve network performance.

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