From owner-freebsd-current  Sat Aug 29 22:57:34 1998
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA16854
          for freebsd-current-outgoing; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 22:57:34 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG)
Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [198.78.58.28])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA16849
          for <current@FreeBSD.ORG>; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 22:57:32 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com)
Received: (from fullermd@localhost)
	by shell.futuresouth.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA23313;
	Sun, 30 Aug 1998 00:55:33 -0500 (CDT)
Message-ID: <19980830005533.31625@futuresouth.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 00:55:33 -0500
From: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>
To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc: "Gregory P. Smith" <greg@nas.nasa.gov>, tom@uniserve.com,
        current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Adapter
References: <199808231741.KAA05988@hub.freebsd.org> <199808241845.LAA00873@ryouko.nas.nasa.gov> <19980830113556.P17530@freebie.lemis.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88
In-Reply-To: <19980830113556.P17530@freebie.lemis.com>; from Greg Lehey on Sun, Aug 30, 1998 at 11:35:56AM +0930
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

On Sun, Aug 30, 1998 at 11:35:56AM +0930, Greg Lehey woke me up to tell me:
>
> On Monday, 24 August 1998 at 11:45:02 -0700, Gregory P. Smith wrote:
> >
> > Good luck getting a single x86 CPU to handle the interrupt load of even
> > a single card with the overhead of processing 1500 byte packets at
> > Gigabit speeds...  (based on observations of other Gig speed class
> > drivers and NICs I've seen).  ;)
> 
> Who said that gigabit Ethernet transfers data between individual
> machines at 125 MB/s?  It's the theoretical maximum speed of a
> broadcast medium.  Connect 100 machines together over gigabit Ethernet
> and you can (theoretically) still transfer 1 MB/s without problems.
> 
> Sure, there are cases where you may want to use the bandwidth, but IMO
> that's not the real purpose of gigabit Ethernet.

For a general setup, I'd agree with that.
But didn't this thread start (or maybe it was another related thread)
with using this in routing between multiple smaller nets?  If you're
using a box with 1 (or 2) of these to route between two physical subnets,
it's not unlikely at all that that single machine is going to need to run
100+ MB/s.


*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
|       FreeBSD; the way computers were meant to be       |
* "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is *
| that I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet."|
*    fullermd@futuresouth.com      :-}  MAtthew Fuller    *
|      http://keystone.westminster.edu/~fullermd          |
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message