From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Feb 25 16:11:23 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA04076 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:11:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from isvara.net (root@[130.88.148.77]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA04021 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:11:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd@challenge.isvara.net) Received: from challenge.isvara.net ([130.88.66.5]) by isvara.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA28793 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 00:11:21 GMT Message-ID: <34F4B2FD.3530EDEE@challenge.isvara.net> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 00:10:37 +0000 From: freebsd@isvara.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Hackers Subject: Re: "Best" Fast Ethernet Card References: <19980225125126.05029@mcs.net> <34F477DC.41FD810D@challenge.isvara.net> <19980225165403.33142@emsphone.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Dan Nelson wrote: > Are you sure about that? According to the first URL you gave, the Fast > Etherlink XL cas only a 4K buffer, split 2K/2K Send/Receive. This > makes it useless for NFS, as a fragmented 8K packet will never get > through (I've seen it happen on a P6/200). The non-XL cards have a 64K > buffer, but only come in ISA or EISA flavors. The XL is PCI-only. All the buffer is used for is to transfer data to/from the card. It is in no way a cache, etc.With the efficiency of the PCI bus, and bus-mastering, that is all that is required. > In addition, the "Parallel Tasking" feature of their NICs only works > when you use 3Com switches/hubs at the other end. I don't have a > reference for this though. I think it was in a recent PC Week article. No. You may be thinking of the 'auto negotiation' feature. Parallel Tasking (and new Parallel Tasking II in rev B) is the name given to the ethernet engine. It has nothing to do with the physical layer. Cheers, Dan _____________________________________ Daniel J Blueman BSc Computation, UMIST, Manchester Email: blue@challenge.isvara.net Web: http://www.challenge.isvara.net/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message