I recently upgraded to unRaid 6 and I then saw that I'm getting a lot of network receive "drops" on the dashboard. Please see attached picture. Does this point to something in particular?

Are you experiencing any issues?

I have an Intel network card installed in both of my computers and I have had this issue since I installed those cards.  The drops only occur when I am watching a blu-ray ISO on my Netgear NT-550 media players. 

 

Now, as you can tell, the CPU's in both my servers are quite slow and I attribute most of this issue to that and the fact that unRAID ver 6.x.x has now been optimized for Dockers and VM's.  I never observed any problems with the serving of any file.  I did have one hiccup when the Intel card 'reset' itself.  (This has only happened about once in more than four months.) 

 

EDIT:  When I first encountered the problem, I did a bit of research (Google) into it.  What I found was that, apparently, the packet drops could be an indicator of a problem BUT not necessary be a problem in-and-by itself.  If there is not some other issue or ptoblem, the consensus  seemed to be to ignore drops. 

Are you experiencing any issues?

 

I've almost always had slow read/write performance with my little Atom machine. Usually in the mid 20MB/sec range even when writing to my SSD cache drive over gigabit ethernet.

Hmm, I don't THINK the network drops would cause that amount of performance degradation. Diagnostics?

Hmm, I don't THINK the network drops would cause that amount of performance degradation. Diagnostics?

 

Cool. The last time I asked for help there were no diagnostics! I've attached the zip file, not really sure what to do with it.

 

Side note, I've had poor performance for several years now, always figured it was some sort of bad hardware but it sure would be great if you find something else!

tower-diagnostics-20151203-2128.zip

I saw no issues at all in your diagnostics.  You have 2 good Intel NIC's, and you are connecting at gigabit speeds.  The Intel NIC's I've seen have all been fast and reliable, with only one downside - I have yet to see one without dropped packets!  However, it's usually just a few, nothing like the almost 2 million you are reporting over 9 days.  It doesn't look like a problem in your server, so I'd have to suspect an issue with the router, a switch, or a distant cable (not the one attached to your server), or a malfunctioning device on the network, past the switch or router.  There are no collisions or other packet issues, which is why I suspect the issue is on a farther network leg or device.

 

Or perhaps your Atom CPU is unable to keep up.

I saw no issues at all in your diagnostics.  You have 2 good Intel NIC's, and you are connecting at gigabit speeds.  The Intel NIC's I've seen have all been fast and reliable, with only one downside - I have yet to see one without dropped packets!  However, it's usually just a few, nothing like the almost 2 million you are reporting over 9 days.  It doesn't look like a problem in your server, so I'd have to suspect an issue with the router, a switch, or a distant cable (not the one attached to your server), or a malfunctioning device on the network, past the switch or router.  There are no collisions or other packet issues, which is why I suspect the issue is on a farther network leg or device.

 

Or perhaps your Atom CPU is unable to keep up.

 

I have got the same problem with both of my servers running Intel NIC's.  I can tell you it is not a network issue.  If I would switch back today to the on-board Realtec NIC's, the drops would disappear.  HOWEVER, then I would have problems with audio dropout and video stalling.  See this thread about that issue:

 

    http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39350.0

 

LimeTech and I did a whole series of tests back then regarding this issue.  (I was a guinea pig and agreed to a informal confidentiality agreement about some of these tests.)  Apparently,  it only effects servers with a 'slow' CPU and I was the only one who really complained (or was using a a Realtec with slow CPU streaming full data rate BluRay quality video).  The Intel NIC 'fixed' the problem.  The side effect was this  fix was the dropped packet issues that came with the Intel NIC's.  The dropped packets have never given any problems that I can detect in more than five months of usage.