Re: Force NIC to 100 Mbps
- From: jpd <read_the_sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 20 Dec 2007 12:53:24 GMT
Begin <Xns9A0C225246DEtoelavabitcom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:22:26 GMT, Tomás Ó hÉilidhe <toe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was looking at NIC's on eBay just there and it seems you can get a 100
Mbps card for less than $5 :-O
You can get them new for that, or almost that. Those tend to be realtek
cards, and you do get what you pay for. They're fine if all you want to
do is drive a 2Mbit adsl modem, or have otherwise low to moderate needs
and CPU to spare. I still wouldn't want them in my systems.
I also see that there's these little USB connectors that are basically a
really really small NIC:
http://cgi.ebay.ie/USB-TO-LAN-RJ45-ETHERNET-10-100-Mbps-NETWORK-
ADAPTER_W0QQitemZ180197017838QQihZ008QQcategoryZ67870QQssPageNameZWDVWQQr
dZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Are these any use? I have USB 2.0 slots in my PC but they're on a card
that connects via PCI... so I'd probably be better off cutting out the
middle-man and getting a NIC that connects directly to PCI? Then again it
would be hand having a tiny little NIC I can carry around and stick into
computers via USB :-D
I have little experience with how well USB NICs perform. They are indeed
useful if you have an USB slot and quickly need to link up something. If
you can put in a PCI card, that'd be my first choice, if for no other
reason than that it's one less dangly thing sticking out that might get
knocked off or get lost or whatever.
Looking at that link, I notice ``Full-speed (12Mbps) usb device''.
I don't know whether the USB 2.0 mentioned elsewhere in there means
it'll go even faster on the USB side if USB 2.0 is available, but if it
doesn't, it won't be able to keep up with a fast ethernet PCI NIC.
What brand should I look for on eBay when buying a PCI NIC?
My preference goes out to digital-now-intel[1] 21143 (`tulip') cards, and
the intel pro 10/100 (8255x and 8256x) cards, 3com 905c after that, then
the rest, and way way way after that, anything realtek or its clones(!).
For a server 3com 980 is also an option because its hardware does checksum
offloading, but you won't notice gains from that in casual use, just like
most people don't notice the low realtek performance.
That's all about 10/100 cards. If you can find a GigE card cheap and it
isn't realtek I'd probably go for it (eg intel, broadcom, syskonnect).
I have to say I'm not up to speed on relative GigE NIC performance so
maybe someone else can chip in with experience there.
The main throughput I'll need will be for Samba file-sharing, basically
copying a few gigabytes to the desktop machine when I'm backing stuff up.
Another way to increase performance is to reduce the traffic needs.
Specialised backup software can reduce the amount of data that needs
to be transferred. Or moving the tapedrive or getting an extra dvd
burner might be options as well. It's all in how you organize things.
Do you think a 100 Mbps PCI would be a vast improvement over the 10 Mbps
ISA, or are there other bottlenecks which decrease the difference? The
machine with the Samba share is a Pentium III 500 MHz with a pretty fast
hard disk.
I can't tell from here where there are additional bottlenecks, if
any. If that machine is the slower of the two, check that it too has
a reasonably fast NIC, and not a realtek. If it has an ISA 10Mbit
card, you won't see gains. If the disk is fast in theory but the disk
controller is not, you won't see gains either. And so on and so forth.
For example, someone complained his two fast machines with a good
quality NIC each didn't get the full performance out of the shared
internet link. Turned out the router/firewall/gateway was an old
leftover box with two realtek cards in it. In that case, moving the
realteks to the newer machines and putting the better cards in the
gateway saw satisfactory improvements for little effort and no cost.
And then there's the network infrastructure to condsider. If you have an
old 10Mbit hub to tie it all together, no amount of GigE NICs is going
to help you, unless and until you also get a GigE switch.
And last but not least, would it be pointless to connect a gigabit NIC
into a PCI slot?
That depends a bit on your traffic patterns. For example, GigE NICs
driving a 100Mbit link can outperform fast ethernet NICs if the traffic
consists of mostly small packets.
You probably will see some gains, especially if both the disk controller
and NIC are on 64bit and/or 66MHz PCI. Whether it will likely be worth
it someone else can say better than I can, altough that someone would
probably need more detailed information as well. Whether it'll be worth
it to you is something else again.
[1] The design is by digital, but intel acquired the plans and sold them
under its brand for a while too.
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.
.
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