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Date:      Fri, 27 Feb 1998 19:14:50 -0800 (PST)
From:      Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
To:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Cc:        Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: "Best" Fast Ethernet Card 
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.3.96.980227191245.29412f-100000@cynic.portal.ca>
In-Reply-To: <199802280243.SAA00310@dingo.cdrom.com>

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On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Mike Smith wrote:

> > > The question is how to measure CPU overhead, since that is the issue at 
> > > hand.
> > 
> > netperf has done this for ages.
> 
> It can measure interrupt handler execution time for just the adapter 
> driver?

No. But you don't need that. You just need to run netperf on the
same completely idle system with each network card and see the
overall difference in CPU utilisation. This has the added advantage
that this will catch other problems with the driver, such as having
to copy due to bad alignment or things like that. (This is probably
not a big deal on i386, but the Intel chipset's ability to pad the
in-memory Ethernet header by a couple of bytes is a godsend on
Alphas, where you generally want the IP header to be aligned.)

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca	   Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	   Through infinite mist, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC  (604) 257-9400	   In code possess'd of invisible folly.


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