Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1998 20:46:17 -0800 (PST) From: Vincent Poy <vince@venus.GAIANET.NET> To: Bill Paul <wpaul@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Bruce Albrecht <bruce@zuhause.mn.org>, mturpin@shadow.spel.com, brett@lariat.org, hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Good, cheap 100BaseT Ethernet cards? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9812242038080.319-100000@venus.GAIANET.NET> In-Reply-To: <199812250046.QAA13840@hub.freebsd.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 24 Dec 1998, Bill Paul wrote: > > Mark turpin writes: > > > On Sun, 13 Dec 1998, Brett Glass wrote: > > > > > > > I'm looking for some good, cheap 100BaseT Ethernet cards which are > > > > supported by drivers included with FreeBSD. Unfortunately, the ones listed > > > > in the "Readme" are "name brands" -- and are going for $80-100 instead of > > > > the $20 that most people seem to be paying for Ethernet NICs for WinDoze. > > > > For example, the Netgear FA310TX is priced in the mid-$20's and comes from > > > > a reputable company, but I can't tell if it will work. > > > > > > > RealTek 8139 based card. They are 10/100Mbps PCI, work with > > > FreeBSD (rl0 driver), and you can get them for $15-$20. I have about > > > 20 of them. > > > > I have a $20 RealTek 8139 card, and while it's rock solid and gives > > reasonable transfer rates at 10 Mbps, it's only capable of doing about > > 50 Mbps sustained transfers in 100 Mbps mode and eats up 25% of a 200 > > MHz PPro's CPU. And that was before Bill Paul made it copy buffers > > nearly all the time because of alignment problems I reported with PPP > > traffic. If I find an Intel EtherExpress 100 for < $40, I'm going to > > replace the RealTek in a shot. > > The RealTek is a pretty cruddy chip. It's the only PCI bus master DMA > ethernet chip that doesn't use a descriptor-based data transfer mechanism. > You will get decent performance out of it if and only if you have a > really mean CPU to drive it: on a Dell PowerEdge 2300/400 (dual Pentium II > 400Mhz SMP box) I can actually get it to do 11.5MB/sec on transmit, > however I suspect that's because of some bcopy() optimizations that > are done by the kernel on PII processors. If I'm lucky I can get it > to do 7MB/sec on a Pentium 200. Cache may also be an issue. Where can I even find a 10/100Mbps NIC Card that uses the RealTek chip? So from what you're saying above, a AMD K6-200, 233 and Intel Pentium 75, 90, 100, 233MMX won't be able to drive it? > Note that SMC also uses the RealTek in a board called the EZ Card 10/100 > PCI 1211TX. The chip may have the RealTek logo covered up and they > changed the PCI vendor and device ID in the EEPROM, but it's definately > a RealTek. (Out of curiosity, if somebody uses these with LoseNT and > can do some performance comparisons between the LoseNT driver and the > FreeBSD driver, I'd be intersted in seeing the results. Granted LoseNT's > networking is vastly different from FreeBSD's, but it would still be > fun to compare them.) I always thought SMC has their own chipset besides using the Digital DEC before. Out of curiousity, I noticed that there is a SMSC, is that the same thing as SMC? > Other cut-rate boards that should work, in order of desirability: > > - ThunderLAN based cards (Compaq Netelligent, Olicom 2326). The > Texas Instruments ThunderLAN is a nice chip, sadly underused. > There aren't exactly cut-rate; pricing is often on par with the > high-end cards (Intel, 3Com) but if you can find one cheap, grab it. > Performance is comparable to the Intel and 3Com XL cards (uses > the if_tl driver). I haven't seen any of these around anywhere. > - Boards based on the Macronix 98713A, 98715 and 98725 chips. These > are DEC tulip clones and will work with the if_mx driver. > Performance is pretty good. Note: the 98713 is different from the > 98713A: the former has an MII bus for NWAY-capable PHYs while the > latter has NWAY support built in. I have not been able to obtain > a 98713 board for perper testing so I don't guarantee that the > autoselection will work. However, the card should still work if you > manually set the media with ifconfig. The 98713A, 98715 and 98725 > cards should all autonegotiate properly. Never seen these either. > - The Netgear FA310TX Rev D1 with the PNIC chip will indeed work > with FreeBSD using the if_pn driver. Speed should be good. The > LinkSys LNE100TX and Matrox 10/100 FastNIC will also work. Hmmm, which one is the PNIC chip? Is it the one that says DEC on it or is it the current model with Netgear printed on the chip? So the current Linksys LNE100TX does work? Are these boards as good as the 3Com and Intel? > - VIA Rhine I/Rhine II cards such as the D-Link DFE530TX. These > are reasonably reliable but performance will suck just like the > RealTek. Why? Because although the Rhine chip uses descriptor-based > DMA mechanism, it expects data buffers to be longword-aligned. In > BSD networking, you aren't always guaranteed that packet fragments > in mbufs will start on longword boundaries, which means you have > to do buffer copies on transmit. The RealTek 8139 suffers from the > same flaw, and I strongly suspect that the VIA Rhine chips began > life as RealTek products. Works with the if_vr driver. Hmmm, guess that one is out of the question even though I see it all over the place. > - Winbond W89C840F cards, such as the Trendware T100-PCIE. This chip > is a half-hearted tulip clone, however it suffers from some extreme > brain damage. I recently discovered that it generates corrupt packets > at 10Mbps half-duplex mode in some cases and I'm still trying to > find a way around this problem. It does appear to work okay in > 10Mbps full-duplex and at 100Mbps modes. If somebody dumps a bunch > of these on your desk, give them a try, but don't expect too much. I haven't seen much of these other than the 10BT NICs. > The receiver on the Winbond also appears to freak out sometimes when > the link partnerswitches modes. For example, say you have a Winbond > card connected via crossover cable to some other card at 10Mbps > half duplex. You exchange some traffic; all seems well. Now you > go to the other system and switch the card to 100Mbps full-duplex. > The Winbond receiver will start scribbling all over its receive > descriptors with garbage error frames. The if_wb driver tries to > hit the chip over the head with a hammer as hard as it can in order > to make it shut up, but it's amazingly persistent. Wow, now this is really bad. > Note that I also have plans to add driver support for another tulip > clone made by ASIX Electronics. Mike Smith has promised to send me a > sample board for testing, which will probably arrive after the holidays. > There are literally dozens of cheap boards available from various vendors > under various names and model numbers, so trying to list all of them > is difficult. Often you will find the exact same card being sold by two > different vendors under different names (and for different prices). > Sometimes the same vendor will even sell two different cards under the > same name (once their supply of one card dries up, they find another one > and pack it in the same box). However most of them use one of the > chips listed above, all of which are of course made in Taiwan (except > the ThunderLAN). This means that before buying, ask the salesdroid > if they can take the board out of the box and show it to you, then check > the card's controller chip. This is still not a 100% sure way to tell > if the board will work with FreeBSD since some vendors put their own > markings on the chips just to confuse you, but it's better than relying > on the vendor's model number or the picture on the box. That's very true but most places won't let a person buy the board and return it if it doesn't work. > -Bill > > P.S.: If someone actually has a Macronix 98713 card they're not using > and would consider donating (or loaning) it to the FreeBSD project, > or knows of somebody actually selling an MX98713 board, please let > me know. The 98713 has been largely replaced by the 98713A, but > I'd still like to support it properly. Cheers, Vince - vince@MCESTATE.COM - vince@GAIANET.NET ________ __ ____ Unix Networking Operations - FreeBSD-Real Unix for Free / / / / | / |[__ ] GaiaNet Corporation - M & C Estate / / / / | / | __] ] Beverly Hills, California USA 90210 / / / / / |/ / | __] ] HongKong Stars/Gravis UltraSound Mailing Lists Admin /_/_/_/_/|___/|_|[____] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.05.9812242038080.319-100000>