From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Jun 1 1:10:25 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from hermes.axis.de (hermes.axis.de [194.163.241.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6620F15646 for ; Tue, 1 Jun 1999 01:10:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from maret@axis.de) Received: from erlangen01.axis.de by hermes.axis.de via smtpd (for hub.FreeBSD.ORG [204.216.27.18]) with SMTP; 1 Jun 1999 08:10:17 UT Received: (private information removed) Message-ID: <91DA20EC3C3DD211833400A0245A4EA9BA0E52@erlangen01.axis.de> From: Alexander Maret To: "'sthaug@nethelp.no'" Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: xl driver for 3Com Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 10:09:59 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi, > Collisions on half-duplex Ethernet are *normal*. Get used to it. > > Collisions is the standard flow control mechanism for > half-duplex Ethernet. > The amount of collisions you get depend on the cards used, > the amount of > traffic, and several other things. The amount of collisions > is also not > very interesting - the amount of *traffic* is. Well as i described in a previous mail to Bill Paul, i tried to transfer two times 30MB of data via samba: At first I tried my FreeBSD machine and I got about 800-900 collisions. Second I booted on the same machine linux and I only got 4 (!) collisions. Bill Paul said to me that the FreeBSD TCP/IP is probably much faster. Well I'm sure that he is right, but from my point of view it didn't take longer to tranfer the files with linux. Anyway, i promised Bill Paul to measure exact values. Then we will see. I have no problem with thousands or millions of collissions, as long as they don't crash my computer. I just want a running system. And as my NT machine didn't crash on transfering a huge amount of data from a linux-server I have to think that this is a bug in something FreeBSD related. The only difference I could see between the two configurations were the collissions and as somebody on the list said there were problems with the xl driver under high load i wrote a letter to Bill Paul. I think I will simply switch to another card. Someone on the list said that their customer didn't have any problems after switching to intel cards. I don't want to switch back to linux again, because FreeBSD is much smoother. > If you connect two hosts to a hub and run ttcp, to push a lot > of traffic > between them, you're very likely to get a 50% collision rate > - with only > two hosts. This is because *every* ack collides with a normal > full sized > packet. This is also perfectly fine and healthy. > > What you want to watch out for, is: > > - Late collisions (these are *not* normal) > - Collisions when you think that the link is in full duplex mode. I will do further investigation to get more detailed infos. Unfotunately I'm very busy at the moment but I'll post more information as soon i get some results. Alex To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message