Re: cheap network card supported by linux
On Sat, Sep 11, 2004 at 07:43:42AM -0500, Tim Kelley wrote:
> On Friday 10 September 2004 14:40, Alvin Oga wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > if you want network performance... you have to spend a day tuning it
> > and testing it and changing the tcp/ip parameters and hope your nic
> > can also keep up ( most all of um fail ... none can run(sustained) at
> > even 50% of its 100Mbps or 1000Mbps rated speeds )
> >
> > $5 for a cheap rt1839too or $150 intel .... is it worth the difference ?
> > - depends ..
>
> Intel Gigabit adapters are only $45 US, and they perform admirably.
There was an interesting article in a highly respected German magazine
(c't 4/04) where they compared GBit-NICs, and the Intel RC82540 controller
(on "PRO/1000MT Desktop" card) clearly performed the best. It transfered
94 MB/s at 52 % CPU-load[1]. The second best card (Broadcom BCM5701
controller on 3Com 3C996B-T) did 90 MB/s at 70 % load. The other ones
did all achieve about 60 MB/s at loads from 80 to 100 %. The Realtek
RTL8169S-32 while being one of the slowest did not even work correctly
(hangs during NETIO runs).
Maybe it is interesting that the difference in performance between the
Intel controller and all the others is even bigger with Linux 2.6
(100 MB/s at 49 % vs. 50-65 MB/s at 83-100 %).
[1] NETIO benchmark, average transfer rate over all block sizes, on
P4 1,6 GHz Linux 2.4.21 (Suse 9.0)
Regards
Matthias
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