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From: j@narcisa.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: connecting a sparc10 and PC together
Date: 12 Jun 1995 13:32:44 +0200
Organization: Private U**x site, Dresden.
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Message-ID: <3rh8ks$mg6@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>
References: <9506091435.AA28260@akela.src.honeywell.com>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
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Matt Englehart <englehar@src.honeywell.com> wrote:
>Hello, I have been using freeBSD for a while now on my 486. I would like to
>network the 486 and a Sparc10 together.
>
>1) ethernet connection: I need to buy an ethernet card for the PC, make sure
> its driver is in the kernel. Question: what is the status on the
> problem noted in the FAQ directory about NFS'ing to high performance
> machines requiring qulaity cards? What is the cheapest card that will
> work between a Sun and the PC, and is supported (troublefree) by FreeBSD?
8-bit cards still suffer from that problem. It's just that the other
end is feeding more Ethernet packets than the PC card is able to
receive in sequence, but since they all belong into a single NFS block
(for the default rsize/wsize of 8 KB), NFS is unable to retransmit a
partially lost block, and hangs. Hence the solution is to limit NFS
block size to less than Ethernet MTU (i.e., 1 KB). It's not much of a
performance hit to do it however, we've been running such config-
urations (with 3Com 3C503's) for a rather long time.
I think something like a WD8013 board might be a good solution.
You'll get impressive performance (> 800 KB/s) at a reasonable price.
NE2000's might also work (they are 16 bit), but are CPU-hogs due to
PIO transfers. They are really cheap.
>2) laplink connection:
Forget about it. FreeBSD's PLIP is only compatible to itself. I doubt
Sparcs do have PLIP at all.
>3) PPP connection: I run a null modem cable between the Sun and PC, and
> run PPP between them. Question: what kind of throughput can be expected?
I don't know what the Sparc would support, but i assume no more than
38 kbps. On a 115 kbps, i've got near 10 KB/s, 38 kbps would make for
a third of this (at best). Really slow even compared to the cheapes
Ethernet.
--
cheers, J"org private: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
http://www.sax.de/~joerg/
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)