GigE on ES4x servers

[Balint Cristian]

On Wednesday 01 June 2005 23:16, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
> From: Balint Cristian <rezso at rdsor.ro>
> > Realtek 8169 chipset based cards are cheap [~20USD], under 2.6
> > kernel work very ok even on alphas [tested personaly]they are even
> > NAPI capable and can move as good as an intel class card for e.g.
> > As i know they work even with rechentisher 2.4.X kernel well
> > [untested by myself].
> 
> Cheap GbE cards tend to have a very small amount (typically 32KB or less)



> of SRAM.  Assuming 1500 byte standard frames, with only 32KB, the card
> has to process 21 frames within every 40 microseconds.
> At a bare minimum, a GbE card -- at least one on a server -- should
> support 802.3x for congestion control.
> 
> > I talked about copper solution, dont see fiber for what is good instead 
> > of copper if you have no more than 20m cable patches. Really.
> 
> EMI.  You should have more than a dozen Cat-5e/6 runs within a cubic
> meter of volume.  Fiber is what you want to use in a closet, for sure.
> 
> > I was able to switch 800Mbit at high pkt/s through realtek without
> > problem performing simple routing.
> > Dont know other cheaper card, but on fiber there are intel cards even in 
> > PCI-X form [e1000 driver], very good and reliable, even multiport forms on 
> > single card solutions are from intel, booth single/multimod solutions.
> 
> Some of Intel's higher-end cards have a 256KB SRAM cache dedicated to
> just reception.  I consider that the "bare minimum" on a GbE card when
> you are concerned about performance.
> 
> And anything lacking 802.3x without a large SRAM cache is asking for
> massive performance issues.

Well, ask for _cheap_ :)
 

> 
> --
> Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
> 
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