*BSD News Article 34953


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From: aboyd@qnx.com (Andrew Boyd)
Subject: Re: Unix PC as dedicated router?
Message-ID: <+rh94bq@qnx.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 94 14:43:51 GMT
Organization: QNX Software Systems
References: <33afek$8s8@rockall.cc.strath.ac.uk> <33b3r5$oml@orion.cc.andrews.edu> <33i467$2ve@fw.novatel.ca>
Lines: 26

Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@sidney.novatel.ca> wrote:
>3c509's can saturate ethernet too ... I was stomping on our corporate
>ethernet with 2 3c509's and 2 486-66's...  the problem appears to have
>risen to "which ethernet adapter can saturate an ethernet with the
>lowest amount of work on behalf of the computer the card is plugged into".

heh heh.  When I was writing a driver for the isa ne2100 (aka amd79c960)
I wrote a little test program which would init the beast, and tx or rx
packets.  According to the alantec, my moronic little test program would
pump out packets at 99% of the possible ethernet bandwidth.  On an old 
386/33.

The test program can optionally _broadcast_ the packets, but I've never
had the balls to do that - I don't mind melting down my segment (see
ethernet capture effect), but it would probably nuke all the 22 other
segments, too.

Oh, you wanted to do something useful with the driver, other than just
generate traffic? 

If you wanna put two network cards in a PC, and get any decent throughput,
I'd strongly recommend a speedy bus: vl or pci.  One isa ethernet card
will occupy 25% of the bus bandwidth, at a minimum.

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