From owner-freebsd-hackers  Wed Apr 28  8: 5:39 1999
Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Received: from octopus.originative (originat.demon.co.uk [158.152.220.9])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id B540C153CB; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 08:05:21 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from paul@originative.co.uk)
Received: by octopus with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9)
	id <JN0SNPP8>; Wed, 28 Apr 1999 16:03:04 +0100
Message-ID: <A6D02246E1ABD2119F5200C0F0303D10FF1A@octopus>
From: paul@originative.co.uk
To: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu, dillon@apollo.backplane.com
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: RE: NFS Patch #8 for current available - new TCP fixes
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 16:03:02 +0100
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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Paul [mailto:wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu]
> Sent: 28 April 1999 14:27
> To: dillon@apollo.backplane.com
> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; current@FreeBSD.ORG
> Subject: Re: NFS Patch #8 for current available - new TCP fixes
> 
> 
> Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, 
> Matthew Dillon 
> had to walk into mine and say:
> 
> >     (fanfair!)
> 
>       (Darth Vader's imperial march theme)
>  
> >     NFS Patch #8 for -current is now available.  This patch 
> fixes serious bugs
> >     w/ NFS/TCP.  Probably not *all* the failure conditions, 
> but hopefully
> >     most of them.
> [...]
>  
> >     Neither the 'de' nor the 'xl' ethernet drivers align 
> the packet.  The 'xl'
> >     driver conditionally aligns it for the alpha.  Part of 
> the patch fixes
> >     the 'xl' driver to unconditionally align the packet 
> buffer in order to
> >     improve NFS performance.  I could not do the same for 
> the 'de' driver
> >     because I am unsure if the dec chipset can handle an 
> unaligned start
> >     address.
> 
> From what I can tell, the DEC parts make you specify an RX DMA buffer
> address that is longword aligned. There are actually not that 
> many devices
> where you're allowed to use arbitrary byte-aligned addresses 
> for receive
> buffers (the 3Com XL and Intel 'speedo' chips let you do it, 
> as well as the
> ThunderLAN, and the Alteon Tigon NIC; I _think_ the AMD PCnet/LANCE 
> devices let you do it, but that's about it).

The Lance requires longword alignement, the PCnet requires 16 byte
alignement if you put it in 32 bit mode, otherwise it's the same as the
lance.

Paul.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message