From owner-freebsd-hardware Thu Sep 19 12:55:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA17991 for hardware-outgoing; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:55:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monk.via.net (monk.via.net [140.174.204.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA17914 for ; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 12:55:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from joe@localhost) by monk.via.net (8.6.11/8.6.12) id NAA12278; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 13:00:18 -0700 Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 13:00:18 -0700 From: Joe McGuckin Message-Id: <199609192000.NAA12278@monk.via.net> To: dave@persprog.com Subject: Re: DEC PCI CHIP QUESTION Cc: hardware@freebsd.org X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > From: "Rodney W. Grimes" > > We just bought an ethernet switch that can configure it's ports as full > > duplex. > > And so did I... :-) > > Which one did you get? I just love new toys! ====================================== When philosophy conflicts with reality, choose reality. Dave Alderman -- dave@persprog.com ====================================== ----- End Included Message ----- We got the USR (formerly AmberWave?) etherswitch. PROS: Inexpensive buyin: Ports come on plug-in cards. So we started out with 8 10-base-t ports. Fiber, 10-base-2 and 10-base-100 cards are available also. CONS: The unit is not as compact as some of the others we've looked at (e.g. Linkswitch 1000). For some of our POPs where leased rack space is at a premium we may go with a 3com. On our network here at the office, we saw ping times to a neighboring network go from 150ms to 50ms or below. We have a heavily loaded web server being fed from here and collisions of this network are a problem. We put one at another POP that has problems. We saw some improvement, but not as dramatic. Out conclusion was that although collisions a a factor there the real problem is that we've run out of bandwidth. These boxes can't perform miracles.