Tuning Intel e1000 NICs

Switch off Interupt Throttle Rate (ITR) when loading the module. Try adding the following line to your modules.conf (or modprobe.conf if 2.6):

options e1000 InterruptThrottleRate=0,0

Use 0,0,0,0 of 2x NICs

(Thanks to Peter Kjellstrom at the Nation Computing Centre, Sweden - from the Beowulf email list)

All the magic options and generally good support info from Intel here: http://support.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-009209.htm

If you have e1000 cards you might also check out the GAMMA project for a non-TCP/IP stack (recently updated with 2.6.x kernel and amd64 x86-64 support): http://www.disi.unige.it/project/gamma/