Re: best NIC Speed + Gbit Q
On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 07:04:25PM +0000, ragnar@this.is wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > > but i now change some Servers from SuSE to debian
> > > and now is the best time to get them a good nic.
>
> What about a Gigabit NIC ?
>
> I am setting up a new RAID file server that will see
> some traffic. My spec is to us a Gigabit NIC on a
> standard (32 bit) PCI card.
> I will be talking to 100Mbit clients.
> (so will not use special Gbit tricks i.e. jumbo-frame)
>
> I do think there is no server performance penalty
> when using a 1Gig NIC, possibly benefits.
>
> The server would probably be literally interrupt
> driven under heavy load, what with the RAID and
> fast the NIC. But that would only apply when
> it is going well beond the limitations of a
> 100 Mbit card.
>
> I know it will not deliver 10 times 100Mbits
> because of overhead and interrupt load but I
> would like to see it max at more than 300Mbit.
>
> Some CPU offloading to the NIC would be cool.
> Who much extra memory would help performance?
>
> As the price is comming down I hope to move to
> installing only 1Gig NICs on all new system.
>
> Comments, links ??
I am not sure the problem is the cpu processing
packets. The 2 mains bottle necks are the bus and the
interrupt lacency. the people of the click router project
(www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/click/) made some studdies about
those limitation (paper is quite interesting). Their solution
is to use DMA based drivers (they coded, tested and modified
some of the card drivers, have a look for more details).
That's why i dont think that card cpu offloading is not
an immediate solution (off course it'll help).
>
> Re. 100MBit cards.
>
> Most of my servers are NOT using much transfer bandwith
> (behind a 10Mbit connection to the net).
>
> I use 100Mbit full-duplex on all new systems,
>
> Most important for me is time to get things working
> and stability, I like:
> Driver on the Linux install disk
> Autoprobe with no parameters to the module
> Duplex Auto_Negotiation that works :-)
>
> (If a card (type that I know) does not work when I
> install a new system I throw in the bin (trash)).
>
> The cards I like and have worked well for me are:
> 3C905, sold second hand for almost nothing
> Realtek RTL-8139, have had no problems with them
> INTEL Ether Pro 100, not many but work ok
>
> > >normally i use the 8139 becaue the work everywhere.
> I am happy to report success when having to clamp
> to 10Mbit full-duplex using this card.
> (using: options 8139too media=0x0018 )
>
> Best
> ragnar@this.is
>
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>
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--> jef@linuxbe.org
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