Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 08:33:52 -0700 From: Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca> To: Tom Samplonius <tom@sdf.com> Cc: cy@uumail.gov.bc.ca, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 3C509B Card Message-ID: <199708251534.IAA24412@passer.osg.gov.bc.ca> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 23 Aug 1997 12:49:16 PDT." <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970823124717.18436D-100000@misery.sdf.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>
> On Sat, 23 Aug 1997, Cy Schubert wrote:
>
> > I think I got my answer from the 3Com website.
> >
> > Question: Can the EtherLink III family of adapters operate in promiscuous
> > mode?
> >
> > Answer: All EtherLink III family adapters are certified for promiscuous
> > mode. However, the parallel task feature of these adapters does not support
> > the promiscuous mode since it drops the bad packets before it gets to the
> > CPU.
>
> Not really. Most cards (all?) handle retransmits internally these days.
> However, I don't belive the Etherlink driver is reading the count off the
> card. Some of the other drivers use to report 0 for collisions as well,
> until the driver was educated on where to read the collision count from.
I had a chance to look at the driver and other drivers as well. You are
indeed correct. The Linux driver does read the counts off the card whenever
an interrupt from the card is generated. I think that this may be a bit of
a waste of CPU, as the only time the count is needed is when it's displayed.
I think that a system call could be used to get the information from the
card instead of needlessly obtaining the information so that netstat could
lseek() to a location in kmem to get it. After a little more thought,
making the information available via the /proc filesystem might be a better
idea.
Regards, Phone: (250)387-8437
Cy Schubert Fax: (250)387-5766
UNIX Support OV/VM: BCSC02(CSCHUBER)
ITSD BITNET: CSCHUBER@BCSC02.BITNET
Government of BC Internet: cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca
cschuber@bcsc02.gov.bc.ca
"Quit spooling around, JES do it."
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199708251534.IAA24412>