From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Mar 10 8:30:15 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from guild.plethora.net (guild.plethora.net [205.166.146.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8788A37B718 for ; Sat, 10 Mar 2001 08:30:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from seebs@guild.plethora.net) Received: from guild.plethora.net (seebs@localhost.plethora.net [127.0.0.1]) by guild.plethora.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id f2AGU8204557 for ; Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:30:08 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200103101630.f2AGU8204557@guild.plethora.net> From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Reply-To: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 10 Mar 2001 01:33:31 EST." <20010310013331.A57865@earl-grey.cloud9.net> Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 10:30:08 -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <20010310013331.A57865@earl-grey.cloud9.net>, Chen Zhao writes: >What is the next most (unofficially of course :) recommended NIC >in terms of driver stability, card reliability and performance, >and driver efficiency (low overhead, etc.), ignoring for the moment >actual NIC price, and just judging from a technical perspective? For that matter, is the fxp still the most-recommended driver on Alpha? I was playing with ethernet cards on a NetBSD/Alpha system, and under NetBSD, on an Alpha, a 3Com Etherlink XL ran rings around an Intel card... But on i386, I get at least as good performance from the Intel cards. Skimming the driver, I got the impression there were some alignment issues that might be cheaper to solve on i386 than Alpha. >Would the xl be next on the list, or would it be one of the previously >mentioned D-Link/Netgear cards for which documentation is freely >available? I've always thought that the latter brands were lower >performance cards... The tulip cards can be quirky, if nothing else. I used to like the VIA Rhine cards, because they were cheap, and I had no problems with them... until suddenly they started crashing at 100Mbps. I don't know why; I ran some of them under very heavy loads at 100Mbps. I can't tell whether it was new cards or a driver change. Jason Thorpe did a radically reworked Tulip driver for NetBSD that seems to handle the majority of the cheapo 21140-series clones quite nicely. -s To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message