Date: 14 Aug 2002 20:59:46 +0000 From: Josh Paetzel <friar_josh@webwarrior.net> To: Matt Johnson <mattj@maine.rr.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Problems with the xl driver or 3Com cards? Message-ID: <1029358787.337.20.camel@heater.vladsempire.net> In-Reply-To: <FD965646-AFD5-11D6-8FEA-00306585BF9A@maine.rr.com> References: <FD965646-AFD5-11D6-8FEA-00306585BF9A@maine.rr.com>
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On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 22:34, Matt Johnson wrote: > Hi all, > > I've tried everything, and I'm really lost for answers here. I have a > FreeBSD box which has a 3Com Etherlink XL in it. A while back, I got a > new 100mbps switch to replace my old 10mbps hub. I noticed that despite > now having a faster network hub, my FreeBSD machine was still unable to > get speeds of more than 200 or 300K/s. This only happened when the > FreeBSD machine was receiving. Transmitting worked fine. > > I did a lot of testing. I tested speeds between two other machines on > my network to make sure it wasn't the hub, and they both got about > 5MB/s to each each other. I noticed that the FreeBSD box was able to > transmit to other machines at the full speed (5MB/s or so). The other > machines on the network were able to do it both ways to each other as > well. The kicker was when I tried putting in another NIC to the FreeBSD > machine (this one used the "dc" driver) and also got full speeds both > ways. > > Naturally, I assumed my current 3Com card (which had been in there for > going 3 years now) was faulty. The card was a 3c905B-TX. I obtained a > couple of spare, relatively unused 3c905-TX cards (not the 'B' model) > and put them in my machine. I tried, and with both these cards, I had > the exact same scenario: transmission works as it should, but reception > seems to hit a 200K/s ceiling and fail. It happens with FTP and a few > other transfer methods I tried. I really don't see what could possibly > be the problem, unless there's some problem with the xl driver that I'm > not aware of. I don't see how this could possibly have gone ignored for > so long though, since I really didn't do anything to trigger it that I > know of, and it's happened only with "xl" cards with 3 different cards. > > Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? > > Thanks in advance, > Matt You really have more issues than that one card. A pair of reasonably fast PC's on a 100tx network should get from 9-10.5M/sec transfer rates. Your other boxes only doing 5 is a problem as well. I've seen this issue over and over again with boxes that were reinstalled, network cards, ports, cables, switches and anything else we could think of swapped around. I joke that some ATX cases are only rated for certain 100tx transfer rates. In your specific case, what are the specs on the machine? I can imagine that a P133 with an old 425 meg IDE drive not being able to saturate a 100TX network. Josh To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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