From: andreas@fly.mgen.uni-heidelberg.de (Andreas Helke) Subject: Re: Why aren't all Ethernet cards the same? Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 21:24:58 GMT
In article <6711@sixhub.UUCP> davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
>In article <andreas.89.744337175@fly.mgen.uni-heidelberg.de> andreas@fly.mgen.uni-heidelberg.de (Andreas Helke) writes:
>
>| There are many different ways to connect a ethernet cable with a pc, you can
>| transfer the data with io ports or a RAM window, you can do busmastering or
>| not etc. Since the performance difference between differnt cards is
>| relativly minor and the latest and greatest ethernet board will probably
>| lack the driver for your preferred OS, it is still a good idea to go with a
>| novell ne2000 clone (not ne2100 this is a quite different card). These cards
>| cost less then $100.
>
> If you consider a range of 1000k-700k cps relatively minor, then your
>statement is correct, otherwise I think you are glossing over the
>situation. Note that this is somewhat driver dependent, some operating systems
>tun far better with one type card. As a general runle, cards using bus
>mastering have best performance, then RAM buffered cards, then i/o
>mapped cards. However, it has been my experience over the last four
>years that some brands of card give 4x better performance than others,
>and that brand is not totally irrelevant.
I have yet to find a source which delivers data to me with more than 450k
cps. Mostly it's slowed down to 200 cps to 120K cps somewhere in the
network. Things are probably different, if you use the cards for NFS on a
local network.
Andreas