From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Mar 26 10:59:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from hot.sand.net (sand.net [153.105.100.100]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B9D737B71D; Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:59:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jclark@teamasa.com) Received: from teamasa.com ([63.221.93.164]) by hot.sand.net (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id f2QILlC08315; Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:21:49 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <3ABF93E9.23F5EA4C@teamasa.com> Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2001 11:10:15 -0800 From: John Clark Organization: Team ASA X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Kenneth D. Merry" Cc: Dennis , "Schmalzbauer, Harald" , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: AW: Best Gigabit ethernet for 4.x References: <5.0.0.25.0.20001118113245.032d3130@mail.etinc.com> <20001118150437.A15956@panzer.kdm.org> <5.0.0.25.0.20010324122812.038f4eb0@mail.etinc.com> <20010324124511.A18612@panzer.kdm.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org "Kenneth D. Merry" wrote: > On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 12:31:05 -0500, Dennis wrote: > > At 05:04 PM 11/18/2000, Kenneth D. Merry wrote: > > >On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 11:33:29 -0500, Dennis wrote: > > > > At 04:28 PM 11/17/2000, Schmalzbauer, Harald wrote: > > > > >I just heard that Intel doesn't supply documentation on ther chipset > > > and the > > > > >FreeBSD and Linux support is quiet bad. The Netgear GA620 is said to be > > > > >twice as fast. The same Chipset (Alteon Tigon/AceNIC) is on the 3com985. As far as I know, 3com has purchased the Alteon adaptor business, hence all 'Alteon' cards are now 3com. In addition, the 'open firmware' that was available from Alteon is no longer available from 3com. (If this has changed in the last few weeks, I am unaware of that.) Hence, one should perhaps take as many snapshots around the various archives of 'working drivers' to have some set of stuff to support the cards. There was mention of a site where a 'last snapshot' of Alteon's open driver open firmware stuff is located, however, I'd have to check my archives to find out what it is, and I don't know if it still available. As for 'intel' support, there is a driver for their gigabit chip for linux, and so the enterprizing person could perhaps get that driver, modify it for FreeBSD use, ie change skb stuff to mbuf, etc. without violating any NDA. As for different 'Tigon' versions based on Alteon's design, the typical memory complements are .5 Meg, and 1 Meg. The 1 Meg would out perform the .5 Meg, but only (in my opinion) in a backplane that supported 66 Mhz/64 bit operation. the typical 33/32 PCI implementation found in most PC would not show a significant difference in performance. Personally I hate the attitude and policies expressed by the NDA on chips that are long out of development. I can understand it for 'new on the block' designs, as that is how competition works. But once a chip has moved from the prototype sample mode into full production, I think the chip manufactures should publish publically on the web (where it is almost 'cost less' to do so) for all implementers to have the information. As it is, it seems in terms of Intel and other chip manufacturers more profitable to make 'strategic' business partnerships with 'big software houses' (for example, buying a stake in LynxOS now LynxOS Works and Blue Cat Linux), than to let the world have a crack at the information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message