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From: Jan Martin Borgersen <borg@cs.unc.edu>
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Subject: 10Mbit Ethernet Adapter Performance
To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 20:18:45 -0400 (EDT)
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Can anyone point me to any performance evaluations
of 10Mb ISA Ethernet adapters or their device drivers?

I'm getting some really interesting numbers:

On an isolated, 100Mb switched Ethernet hub with no
other network traffic, I'm running ttcp to perform
tcp and udp blasts between several 486-66 class 
machines with ISA 10Mb Ethernet adapters.

When machines with generic IBM cards (looks like
a NS 83905A chip) thrown into NE2000 emulation and
using the ed0 driver are transmitting, I'm seeing
network throughputs on the order of 8300 bps.

When machines with 3Com 3C509 Etherlink III's using
the ep0 driver are transmitting, I'm seeing network
throughputs on the order of 3500 bps.

Interestingly, the machine I have with a PCI 3C590
3Com card using the vx0 driver is transmitting 
at about 7700 bps -- still significantly SLOWER than 
the NE2000 emulated cards!!!!

I've swapped cards among machines -- the bad numbers
follow the 3C509's and ep0 drivers, and seem to be
much more a function of transmitter than receiver.

What happened to FreeBSD's 3Com drivers?????  (Or am
I not configuring something for optimization?)

-j