Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 23:52 EDT From: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: question about "ed" driver performance on ASUS SP3G & 486DX4/100 Message-ID: <33ee8f490.55c9@databus.databus.com>
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As a data point, I just copied 5MB from a P6/200 running fbsd 2.1.5 & a Pro 100B (at 10 MHz) to a 486/66 running Unixware 2.0.3 with a WD8013. Via NFS, 651 KB/sec. I have in fact seen slow transfers to a 486 with WD8013 from an SGI workstation. I wonder if it has more to do with the ethernet than with the 8013. But on the same lan, another 486 with a 3com 3c509 was able to keep up. It may have something to do with how collisions get handled, as I vaguely recall (was a couple of years ago) that running multiple transfers simultaneously caused trouble with the 8013 but not with the 3c509. WARNING: In all the tests I've run, the 486 was running Unixware, not fbsd. <barney@databus.com> > Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 19:32:27 -0700 > From: Mike Haertel <mike@ducky.net> > > 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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