> > can it be ever so high
> > that the bottom half has only sufficient time to enqueue the packets but
> > not to process them (because of the handler getting invoked so often).?
> 
> That's not impossible - but you would have to cite exact machine
> configuration, CPU, board, driver and OS version to say more.

It is only really likely in promiscuous mode (or in the presence of
a broadcast storm).  Under normal conditions the sending system
will either run out of TCP window or start waiting for a response
at the application layer - so the amount of data is reasonably finite.

Of course, once the processing delays get longer than the the senders
protocol timeouts you get a catastropic problem.

	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk