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From: "Andrew V. Stesin" <stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua>
Message-Id: <199607031341.QAA03393@office.elvisti.kiev.ua>
Subject: Re: muliport boards - building a PPP dialup server
To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith)
Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 16:41:21 +0300 (EET DST)
Cc: stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua, michaelv@HeadCandy.com, cofer@www.cas.unt.edu,
        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, Kevin_Swanson@blacksmith.com,
        freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, isp@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199607031243.WAA09601@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Jul 3, 96 10:13:12 pm
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Hi Mike,

# > 	and who can enlighten me about Stallion cards?
# 
# gerg@stallion.com.au wrote and supports the FreeBSD driver for the
# entire range of Stallion cards.

	Thanks for the pointer! (I tried mailto:info@stallion.com
	recently, and didn't get any useful information,
	signal/noise was ~0.0 in their reply).

# > 	(I'm looking for PCI, 16 or 32 ports device, be it
# > 	Stallion, Cyclades, Digiboard or whoever).
# > 	At least 16 ports, PCI, and FreeBSD support _are_ the
# > 	requirements.
# 
# I'm curious - why PCI?

	Something makes me beleive that if I want more than 16 ports
	at 115200 per box, there would be two bottlenecks:

	1. tty-level driver overhead, that's what I'm watching
	   now with 16 FIFOed ports in 486dx4/100 -- interrupt
	   load is tiny, and most of CPU is eaten by system.
	   "Smart" card with it's own CPU (I treat it like
	   an I/O co-processor) should minimize this factor. (?)

	2. ISA bus itself, no matter what will I put into it.
	   We don't have any EISA slots; so PCI is left.
	   (And should I mention the fact that there are boxes around
	   of non-Intel architectures running unices, which
	   have PCI slots but no ISA slots?)  Yes, probably I'm
	   wrong and ISA can deal i.e. with 32x115200; but how
	   reliable will this configuration be?

# Stallion have an excellent reputation and their gear
# is available prettymuch anywhere in the worl;

	Still absent here in Ukraine, for a pity.

# I wouldn't hesitate to 
# recommend them if you're serious about your hardware.

	Thanks, got it.

-- 

	With best regards -- Andrew Stesin.

	Phones/fax:  +380 (44) { 244-0122, 276-0188, 271-3457, 271-3560 }

	"You may delegate authority, but not responsibility."
					Frank's Management Rule #1.