high-bandwidth multicast traffic

[Stefaan]

Hi!

When I generate a lot of multicast traffic (500mbps) from some host on the network to a virtual machine with a virtual e1000 (over the software network bridge), the network on my virtual machine hangs after a couple of seconds. All hosts (virtual and non-virtual) are running Debian Lenny. The physical host gives kernel stack traces in its kernel ring buffer that seem to be related.

The physical host is a four-core Intel Core2 which can handle the multicast traffic in the host os. The virtual host is a four-core as well, with a virtual e1000.

I will attach the kernel ring buffer log.

[Stefaan]

kernel ring buffer log extract

[Stefaan]

Retried with Virtualbox 3.1.0.

Though I did not get the "soft lockup" messages, the network again blocks after a few seconds of high-bandwidth multicast traffic. "tcpdump" on both host on virtual machine show that traffic from the virtual machine to the host still works, but traffic from the host does not reach the virtual machine. After running "ethtool -r eth0" in the virtual machine, normal traffic seems to be restored.