Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 12:45:12 -0700 From: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> To: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com> Cc: "Schmalzbauer, Harald" <H.Schmalzbauer@belenus.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AW: Best Gigabit ethernet for 4.x Message-ID: <20010324124511.A18612@panzer.kdm.org> In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20010324122812.038f4eb0@mail.etinc.com>; from dennis@etinc.com on Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 12:31:05PM -0500 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>
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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. > > > > > > > > > Are all of the cards supported that use this chipset? I read somewhere > > that > > > the netgear card has a smallish buffer, and that the alteon was a better > > > choice. How does the 3com card compare in that respect? > > > >The Netgear boards have 512K SRAM, the 3Com boards have 1MB SRAM. > > > >You can get Alteon-branded boards (with either 512K or 1MB SRAM), but > >generally only directly from Alteon, and you're going to pay more than you > >would for either the 3Com or Netgear boards. > > > >The 3Com and Netgear boards are identical to the Alteon boards. The only > >difference is they've got "Netgear" or "3Com" silk-screened on them, and > >the Alteon boards don't have any logos on them. > > > >FWIW, 3Com is buying Alteon's NIC group. Apparantly (according to an > >Alteon engineer who posted on the linux-acenic list) they're just buying > >the technology, not hiring the engineers: > > When you say "identical", that implies that they are the same...or do you > just mean that they use the same parts? It seems unlikely that alteon would > allow netgear to license its product and them sell it for 1/2 the price. Alteon evidently didn't want to undersell their OEMs. I think most of their NIC business was via sales from Netgear, 3Com, etc., and not via direct sales of their own NICs. (Which you could only buy direct from Alteon.) And the cards are pretty much the same, except that the Alteon boards generally have no identifying markings on them, whereas the Netgear and (I think) 3Com boards have the vendor's name silk-screened on the board. > Price is not an issue at this level as performance is tantamount, but Im > not sure you'd need more than 512M with unix unless you have several NICs > in a box. I'd like to see a Gigabit board with 512M. :) Assuming you mean 512K, you're probably right, that would be sufficient in many situations. The thing to remember is that you don't get the entire 512K for caching packets, since part of it (less than half) is used for the firmware and data structures. Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@kdm.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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