Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 14:20:35 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> To: aledm@relay-europe.ps.net (Aled Morris) Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: best performance hardware Message-ID: <199504062120.OAA05161@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9504062116.A9633-0100000@relay-europe.ps.net> from "Aled Morris" at Apr 6, 95 09:16:40 pm
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> > I'm thinking of putting together a couple of servers (NNTP and WWW) using > PCI Pentium based FreeBSD systems, and I'd appreciate some advice on the > best Ethernet cards to use. > > My hardware vendor will throw in NE-2000 clones free, but from what I've > read on this list, they will take a lot of CPU to drive. Do I need PCI > Ethernet boards, or will good ISA boards be enough (i.e. will I be able > to run at full Ethernet speed with a 3c509?) Any ISA based card will spend more time copying the bytes between the host and the card. The memory mapped cards are faster than the I/O mapped cards. The PCI Dec 21040 based cards place the least load on the CPU (they are bus mastered devices and can drive the ethernet at full speed with very little load placed on the host CPU). Almost all of my customers buying PCI machines for ethernet server applications are buying the Compex Enet/32 PCI card. This card uses the DEC 21040 chip. You should be able to find it for < US $119, if not contact me, as that is what I sell them for now. > The machines will have 90MHz CPUs, 32Mb RAM, Adaptec PCI SCSI and 2Gb > or 4Gb disks. The net connections will be to an (as yet unpurchased) > Ethernet switch connected to a FDDI backbone. > > Thoughts? Recommendations? I checked out the FAQ but there's nothing in > there about relative performance of the different supported hardware. You will need to be running a either -current or a very recent snap shot to support the AHA2940 series of controllers (you should also be running this with the DEC 21040 based ethernet cards). -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Custom computers for FreeBSD
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