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[Rodrigo Vaz <1391339@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Stefan,

Interesting finding indeed, looks like the author has only tested on
Xen-4.4 and the EC2 instance type that we use report Xen-3.4 as the
logline below shows:

Xen version: 3.4.3.amazon (preserve-AD)

I'm using a common S3 url in my test cases and the results are the same
either using curl or ab to measure the download speed. I've used iperf
and netperf between two of our instances and got similar results, the
difference is that using the S3 url is noticeable.

What is also interesting is that despite the fact that Lucid (with
kernel 3.8.11) instance shows GRO as enabled it may not actually use GRO
at all since the GRO API was only introduced on 3.13 and that could mean
the processing impact will remain the same in both instances, I will try
to measure this and will report but in the meanwhile let me know if is
there anything I can mesure that may help to identify the issue.

Thanks,
Rodrigo.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1391339

Title:
  Trusty kernel inbound network performance regression when GRO is
  enabled

Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  After upgrading our EC2 instances from Lucid to Trusty we noticed an
  increase on download times, Lucid instances were able to download
  twice as fast as Trusty. After some investigation and testing older
  kernels (precise, raring and saucy) we confirmed that this only
  happens on trusty kernel or newer since utopic kernel shows the same
  result and disabling gro with `ethtool -K eth0 gro off` seems to fix
  the problem making download speed the same as the Lucid instances
  again.

  The problem is easily reproducible using Apache Bench a couple times
  on files bigger than 100MB on 1Gb network (EC2) using HTTP or HTTPS.

  Following is an example of download throughput with and without gro:

  root@runtime-common.22 ~# ethtool -K eth0 gro off
  root@runtime-common.22 ~# for i in {1..10}; do ab -n 10 $URL | grep "Transfer rate"; done
  Transfer rate:          85183.40 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          86375.80 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          94720.24 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84783.82 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84933.09 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84714.04 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84795.58 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84636.54 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84924.26 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          84994.10 [Kbytes/sec] received
  root@runtime-common.22 ~# ethtool -K eth0 gro on
  root@runtime-common.22 ~# for i in {1..10}; do ab -n 10 $URL | grep "Transfer rate"; done
  Transfer rate:          74193.53 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          56808.91 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          56011.58 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          82227.74 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          70806.54 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          72848.10 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          58451.94 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          61221.33 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          58620.21 [Kbytes/sec] received
  Transfer rate:          69950.03 [Kbytes/sec] received
  root@runtime-common.22 ~# 

  Similar results can be observed using iperf and netperf as well.

  Tested kernels: 
  Not affected: 3.8.0-44-generic (precise/raring), 3.11.0-26-generic (saucy)
  Affected: 3.13.0-39-generic (trusty), 3.16.0-24-generic (utopic)

  Let me know if I can provide any other information that might be helpful like perf traces and reports.
  Rodrigo.

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