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Date:      Mon, 26 Mar 2001 11:10:15 -0800
From:      John Clark <jclark@teamasa.com>
To:        "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org>
Cc:        Dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, "Schmalzbauer, Harald" <H.Schmalzbauer@belenus.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: AW: Best Gigabit ethernet for 4.x
Message-ID:  <3ABF93E9.23F5EA4C@teamasa.com>
References:  <5.0.0.25.0.20001118113245.032d3130@mail.etinc.com> <B14AF62CDA08D4118B8C00508B44A0B5154E4E@server02.belenus.co <5.0.0.25.0.20001118113245.032d3130@mail.etinc.com> <20001118150437.A15956@panzer.kdm.org> <5.0.0.25.0.20010324122812.038f4eb0@mail.etinc.com> <20010324124511.A18612@panzer.kdm.org>

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"Kenneth D. Merry" wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 12:31:05 -0500, Dennis wrote:
> > At 05:04 PM 11/18/2000, Kenneth D. Merry wrote:
> > >On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 11:33:29 -0500, Dennis wrote:
> > > > At 04:28 PM 11/17/2000, Schmalzbauer, Harald wrote:
> > > > >I just heard that Intel doesn't supply documentation on ther chipset
> > > and the
> > > > >FreeBSD and Linux support is quiet bad. The Netgear GA620 is said to be
> > > > >twice as fast. The same Chipset (Alteon Tigon/AceNIC) is on the 3com985.

As far as I know, 3com has purchased the Alteon adaptor business, hence
all 'Alteon' cards are now 3com. In addition, the 'open firmware' that was
available from Alteon is no longer available from 3com. (If this has changed
in the last few weeks, I am unaware of that.)

Hence, one should perhaps take as many snapshots around the various
archives of 'working drivers' to have some set of stuff to support the cards.
There was mention of a site where a 'last snapshot' of Alteon's open driver
open firmware stuff is located, however, I'd have to check my archives
to find out what it is, and I don't know if it still available.

As for 'intel' support, there is a driver for their gigabit chip for linux, and
so the enterprizing person could perhaps get that driver, modify it for
FreeBSD use, ie change skb stuff to mbuf, etc. without violating any NDA.

As for different 'Tigon' versions based on Alteon's design, the typical
memory complements are .5 Meg, and 1 Meg. The 1 Meg would out
perform the .5 Meg, but only (in my opinion) in a backplane that
supported 66 Mhz/64 bit operation. the typical 33/32 PCI implementation
found in most PC would not show a significant difference in
performance.

Personally I hate the attitude and policies expressed by the NDA on
chips that are long out of development. I can understand it for
'new on the block' designs, as that is how competition works. But
once a chip has moved from the prototype sample mode into
full production, I think the chip manufactures should publish
publically on the web (where it is almost 'cost less' to do so)
for all implementers to have the information.

As it is, it seems in terms of Intel and other chip manufacturers
more profitable to make 'strategic' business partnerships with
'big software houses' (for example, buying a stake in LynxOS
now LynxOS Works and Blue Cat Linux), than to let the world have
a crack at the information.






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