Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 19:32:27 -0700 From: Mike Haertel <mike@ducky.net> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: question about "ed" driver performance on ASUS SP3G & 486DX4/100 Message-ID: <199708110232.TAA03202@ducky.net>
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I have two boxes, one based on the ASUS SP3G with a 486 DX4/100 processor, and another based on the ASUS P6NP5 with a 150 MHz PPro. The 486 box has a 16-bit WD8013 based ethernet board, and the PPro has an EtherExpress Pro/100. I attempted to do an NFS install of FreeBSD 2.2.2 on the 486 box using the PPro box as the server. At appeared to detect the ethernet board Ok, but it got hung when actually trying to copy files. After a considerable pain I concluded that it was dropping the trailing packets (fragments), and the @#%@! UDP and/or NFS protocol on the server was responding by attempting to retransmit the entire packet again, and thus causing the trailing packets to be lost again. It seems that the PPro pumps the bits out on the wire so fast that the 486 had no time to catch its breath. Setting the maximum NFS read size to 2K or smaller allowed it to work. But slowly. The same wd8013 ethernet card worked fine for a network install to a Pentium/90 based Intel Xpress box. I really have trouble believing the 486/100 is so much slower than the Pentium/90 it can't keep up. So: Is there anything special I should know about wd8013 cards and ASUS SP3G's and/or 486/100's? Or am I just plain out of luck? In the latter case could anybody recommend a faster ISA ethernet card that's widely supported by the free OS's? Thanks, Mike
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