Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 10:17:29 -0500 From: "Mike Avery" <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 3c509,ep,fbsd3.1 Message-ID: <199905291528.KAA11102@hostigos.otherwhen.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.03.9905281610550.11808-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> References: <000d01bea91d$0bff9ec0$436a71c3@cl106067.osu.cz>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 28 May 99, at 16:13, Doug White wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 1999, Josef Belkovics wrote:
>
> > I am using fbsd 3.1 as ip+ipx router with 2x3c905 (xl,pci) + 4x3c509
> > (ep,isa) boards.
> Yuck. They do make quad-port PCI Ethernet cards. I don't know if a 66MHz
> Pentium can handle those though.
Yuck indeed. Because the 3c509 has a very small buffer it interupts
the system early, so the processor can handle the processing that
should have been done on the card. The 3c509 is OK, but not great,
as a workstation NIC. It really falls down as a server NIC. It
makes heavy demands on the system, and it tends to cause dropped
and mangled packets. I am truly surprised you were getting decent
performance with 4 3c509's in a system.
I'd suggest switching to other NICs. Almost any other NICs.
If you are in a coax environment, or if you aren't going to move
towards 100baseT any time soon, I'd look at the NE2000 clones.
They're cheap, they're reliable... they're not a bad choice.
If you are in a 10baseT environment, especially if you think you're
moving towards 100baseT, I'd look at switching to faster cards.
There are a number of decent inexpensive cards based on the DEC
chip set. I've had good results with DLink, LinkSYS, and NetGear
(ONLY with FreeBSD drivers though, I do NOT recommend NetGear
for DOS or Windows).
Intel makes a number of nice cards, some for servers, some for
desktops. All of them are good enough to use in servers, but the
ones Intel calls server cards have more intelligence on them,
reducing the load on your machine. They make a server NIC with
multiple (well, two) ports on a single PCI card. I'm not sure if
FreeBSD has support for the Intel server NICs, but if the support is
there, those are very nice cards. Intel does make 10/100 cards for
ISA slots, which could also be a consideration for you.
Mike
======================================================================
Mike Avery MAvery@mail.otherwhen.com
(409)-842-2942 (work)
ICQ: 16241692
* Spam is for lusers who can't get business any other way *
A Randomly Selected Thought For The Day:
Smith's Law: No real problem has a solution.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199905291528.KAA11102>