Date: Wed, 3 Jul 1996 16:41:21 +0300 (EET DST) From: "Andrew V. Stesin" <stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua, michaelv@HeadCandy.com, cofer@www.cas.unt.edu, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, Kevin_Swanson@blacksmith.com, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: muliport boards - building a PPP dialup server Message-ID: <199607031341.QAA03393@office.elvisti.kiev.ua> In-Reply-To: <199607031243.WAA09601@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Jul 3, 96 10:13:12 pm
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Hi Mike,
# > and who can enlighten me about Stallion cards?
#
# gerg@stallion.com.au wrote and supports the FreeBSD driver for the
# entire range of Stallion cards.
Thanks for the pointer! (I tried mailto:info@stallion.com
recently, and didn't get any useful information,
signal/noise was ~0.0 in their reply).
# > (I'm looking for PCI, 16 or 32 ports device, be it
# > Stallion, Cyclades, Digiboard or whoever).
# > At least 16 ports, PCI, and FreeBSD support _are_ the
# > requirements.
#
# I'm curious - why PCI?
Something makes me beleive that if I want more than 16 ports
at 115200 per box, there would be two bottlenecks:
1. tty-level driver overhead, that's what I'm watching
now with 16 FIFOed ports in 486dx4/100 -- interrupt
load is tiny, and most of CPU is eaten by system.
"Smart" card with it's own CPU (I treat it like
an I/O co-processor) should minimize this factor. (?)
2. ISA bus itself, no matter what will I put into it.
We don't have any EISA slots; so PCI is left.
(And should I mention the fact that there are boxes around
of non-Intel architectures running unices, which
have PCI slots but no ISA slots?) Yes, probably I'm
wrong and ISA can deal i.e. with 32x115200; but how
reliable will this configuration be?
# Stallion have an excellent reputation and their gear
# is available prettymuch anywhere in the worl;
Still absent here in Ukraine, for a pity.
# I wouldn't hesitate to
# recommend them if you're serious about your hardware.
Thanks, got it.
--
With best regards -- Andrew Stesin.
Phones/fax: +380 (44) { 244-0122, 276-0188, 271-3457, 271-3560 }
"You may delegate authority, but not responsibility."
Frank's Management Rule #1.
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