Subject: Re: arp-scan triggers via-velocity "eth0: excessive work at interrupt"

From: Stephen Hemminger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:39:58 -0700

On 12 Jun 2007 21:56:38 -0400
[email-masked] wrote:

> It kind of surprised me that sending 254 arp packets by using the arp-scan
> tool (http://www.nta-monitor.com/tools/arp-scan/) on a /24 consistently
> triggers a burst of "eth0: excessive work at interrupt."
> 
> This is a 600 MHz PIII, 2.6.22-rc4, via-velocity driver.
> 
> model name      : Pentium III (Katmai)
> stepping        : 3
> cpu MHz         : 601.406
> cache size      : 512 KB
> 
> 00:09.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6120/VT6121/VT6122 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [1106:3119] (rev 11)
> 
> Just double-checking... the program actually sent 463 packets (256 +
> a retry to all those that didn't respond to the first one), and triggers
> 11 copies of the kernel message.
> 
> Command line: arp-scan -I eth0 -l [-v]

The via-velocity needs NAPI among lots of other fixes. The driver is too vendor ish
and nobody works on it.