From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 3 3:54: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from labinfo.iet.unipi.it (labinfo.iet.unipi.it [131.114.9.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 31B4F14E6B for ; Mon, 3 May 1999 03:52:42 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it) Received: from localhost (luigi@localhost) by labinfo.iet.unipi.it (8.6.5/8.6.5) id KAA21954; Mon, 3 May 1999 10:36:35 +0200 From: Luigi Rizzo Message-Id: <199905030836.KAA21954@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Subject: Re: Decent network cards for 100Mbit? To: hart@at.dotat.com (Leigh Hart) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 10:36:35 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: shocking@prth.pgs.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199905030910.SAA17770@at.dotat.com> from "Leigh Hart" at May 3, 99 06:39:47 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1244 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Stephen Hocking-Senior wrote: > > > > Having discovered that the Realtek chipset is a > > flatulent sack of pus, > > Um, what gives you that idea? I've used literally dozens of > them throughout my network on both router based bsd boxen as > well as busy servers (the 10Mb variety). i think he refers to the 8139 (100Mbit version) which has some performance limitations according to the driver, and essentially forces you to do a memory copy. This said, you get what you pay for! While the board might have its problems and bugs (e.g. i get occasional timeouts and watchdog interventions with the 8139 on a 10Mbit bus), several other cards are not exempt from bugs, and they only work well because various software workarounds. Here we have a variety of 2114x (i think over 100 in various labs, 1996 to 1999 vintages[buy date]) and i have experienced quite a few problems in multicast usage (and fixed some of them; but there are still systematic problems with the 21143...), plus the cards tend to fall asleep and you need to manually restart it every now and then. The Intel "fxp" is advertised by these lists as a very good one, but it costs twice the Tulip and 3-4 times as much as the 8139 cheers luigi To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message