Date: Wed, 24 Apr 96 11:36:00 PDT From: Robert Clark <ROBERTC@PII.COM> To: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freefall.freebsd.org> Cc: "Robert Clark @ open.org" <clark@opengovt.open.org> Subject: What network cards work well? Message-ID: <317E74AE@smtp>
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Questions:
ISA NICS:
Is the Intel EtherExpress NIC and or driver intrinsicly braindamaged?
What ISA bus NIC(s) has/have the most fully featured driver support
under FreeBSD 2.0.5 and 2.1? ie:Bpf
Will changing from ISA to PCI based NICS lessen overhead, or speed
response time, on a P5 based system?
PCI NICS:
What PCI bus NIC(s) has/have the most fully feature driver support
under FreeBSD 2.1?
If I run a DEC based Fast Ethernet card, will it run well in a standard
10Mb network? Do the DEC based cards suffer when compared to a standard
10Mb card?
Are 'lance' based PCI NICs supported under FreeBSD 2.1?
PCI SCSI CONTROLLERS
I've heard the NCR based PCI SCSI controllers touted as being values.
Are there any performance related functions missing from the NCR based
cards, or are the non NCR based boards just over priced?
Blather:
Help!
I've run FreeBSD 2.0.5 on two different systems, both using Intel
EtherExpress cards. (Why? because they're supported, and there is a slew of
them in use here.)
On a Pentium-90 system with 16MB RAM, I am able to generate ix0:
timeouts under heavy (network traffic) loads. I would'nt be concerned, but
this machine serves as a web-proxy and the stuttering of the card kicking in
and out looks bad at the web-browser end.
On a (VLB) 486DX2-80 system with 16MB RAM, I have been getting streams
of 'ix.cx.dmaunder', and 'ix.cx.heartbeat' messages under heavy (network
traffic) loads.
*** Before you send back any 'RTFM' replies:
I attribute the timeouts to the fact that the P5-90 can drive the ix0:
faster than the card can go. I would like to run a PCI card in this
machine, but don't want to buy one until I've heard good things from people
who've used them. I have a 'lance' chipset PCI card available, but it isn't
(doesn't seem to be) supported in 2.0.5.
I'm concerned about the 'ix.cx.dmaunder' messages on the DX2-80 though.
I've tried every different IRQ setting I can that isn't a conflict, to no
avail. If this is a mainboard issue, then I'll use it for something else
(not FreeBSD) instead.
As the kernel ships, in 2.0.5, the ix0: driver has 32k of ram mapped in
for the network card. I don't usually run any ram mapped when running dos.
I made sure that the cards softsettings matched the ix0: drivers.
Any help would be
appreciated,
[RC]
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