Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 13:39:42 -0500 (CDT) From: bugs@freebsd.netcom.com (Mark Hittinger) To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: re: Slow 3c590's Message-ID: <199604111839.NAA03641@freebsd.netcom.com>
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> From: Ron Steele <rjs@asd.banctec.com> > We finally have a FreeBSD router set up. The configuration is a > Dell P133 with 4 3c590's. The performace of this system is pretty > dismal. Does anyone have any pointers on how to speed things up? > OS is snap 03/23/96 I'm not sure this tid bit applies to the 3c590. The other 3c5xx cards I have played with have a firmware setting labelled "client mode" and "server mode". Naturally I selected "server mode". Many FreeBSD'ers have made the same choice for obvious reasons! As it turns out, the "server mode" is a way that 3com artificially throttles the number of interrupts you can get per unit time (somehow). This is to allow a novell style server to have some cycles for other things. If you set the card to "client mode" then the 3c5xx cards will process interrupts as quickly as they can, without a firmware inhibitor. So boot the dos setup tool that comes with your ethernet cards and make sure that you've selected "client mode" on all the card (assuming such a setting exists on the 3c590). Your performance should go from dismal to tolerable. :-) Regards, Mark Hittinger Netcom/Dallas bugs@freebsd.netcom.com
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