av> kernel/tunables recommendations,

I suggest device polling. This will increase the pps you can forward, and optimistically cause the machine to drop packets rather than go into livelock if the pps exceeds its ability. IMHO it should be used on any router. and IIRC it does work with the hme driver.

add to your kernel config and rebuild the kernel:

options DEVICE_POLLING options HZ=1000

then add to /etc/sysctl.conf:

kern.polling.enable=1

I think there is some ``deprecated'' message saying you are now supposed to enable device polling through ifconfig, which I never fully understood because I thought the device polling framework was originally meant to someday include more devices than just network cards. Anyway, the above is what I do and works for me on 6.0.