Subject: [netatalk-admins] 100MB PCI Ethernet card synopsis

From: "Paul M. Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 17:02:01 -0600 (CST)

Here is the summary of info I recieved about 100MB PCI Ethernet cards. Based
on the info on www.xinet.com/benchmarks i think we'll stick with Asante, but
here's the info for those that requested it.

Paul

>From [email-masked] Mon Mar 23 02:33:23 1998

Hi,
 
> I'm looking for suggestions on PCI 100BaseT cards for Macintosh systems. 
> I use the Vortex & Tulip based cards in my PC's any suggestions for the Mac.
> We currently use Asante, anyone have any experiences w/ other cards.

We're looking into getting SMC EtherPower II (9432) cards for our
network (PCs and Macs). SMC have Mac drivers on their homepage, but
we haven't tested them yet. I'm currently making sure that the
current chip revision has all bugs of the previous one fixed.
Bugs were:

 - Multicast filtering is broken
 - You cannot maintain 100Mbps sustained receive rate in full duplex
	mode, because there's some internal bottleneck at 83 Mbps.

Jens.

-- 
Jens Maurer <[email-masked]>		  Tel. +49 6102 7761-20 / Fax. -50
opus 5  interaktive medien gmbh                      Neu-Isenburg, Germany

>From [email-masked] Tue Mar 24 10:13:24 1998

>I'm looking for suggestions on PCI 100BaseT cards for Macintosh systems.
>I use the Vortex & Tulip based cards in my PC's any suggestions for the Mac.
>We currently use Asante, anyone have any experiences w/ other cards.
>
>Thanks
>
>Paul

Don't know what else you've learned so far but there are benchmarks at
www.xinet.com comparing a few fast ethernet cards connected to their
"netatalk like" server.

http://www.xinet.com/benchmarks/

>From [email-masked] Fri Mar 20 14:19:12 1998

Paul,

For I see no replies on the list, I decided to tell You the little I
know about this.

Paul M. Fleming wrote:
> I'm looking for suggestions on PCI 100BaseT cards for Macintosh systems.
> I use the Vortex & Tulip based cards in my PC's any suggestions for the Mac.
> We currently use Asante, anyone have any experiences w/ other cards.

I've had a test setup, where I had a P133 based Linux (tulip) with
netatalk against a medium and a high-end Mac. I tried different
tulip-based 'clone' cards in the Macs, and I had constantly about
1,5MB/sec with some cards, where ~4MB/sec with others. So try to make
some tests before You buy more of a given model.

As of vendors, I looked at znyx's website (www.znyx.com); they look like
their tulip-based product is a good one (note, that I have no actual
experience with them), and they sell a 4-in-one 100BaseT tulip-based
card, which might come very handy in some situations.

I have virtually no information about other 100BaseT vendors/chips.

Sincerely,
Andras Kadinger
[email-masked]

>From [email-masked] Thu Mar 19 22:46:18 1998

>I'm looking for suggestions on PCI 100BaseT cards for Macintosh systems.
>I use the Vortex & Tulip based cards in my PC's any suggestions for the Mac.
>We currently use Asante, anyone have any experiences w/ other cards.
>
>Thanks
>
>Paul

If you receive private email please be kind enough to summarize on the list
as I'd be interested to hear what you find.

I have not had much experience with Fast Ethernet on the Mac but did
succeed in running an SMC Etherpower card on my PowerMac 9500. I simply
used a PC card with the downloadable Mac driver from SMC.

I hear that Kingston sells an inexpensive Mac compatible tulip card.

I may have more information for you in the coming week as I should
(finally) receive our four new Apple G3 systems (one will include Apple's
"fast ethernet" option as available from the Apple Store)

Networking performance in my PowerMac 9500 has been increasing steadily
with new CPU upgrades (now G3) and Mac OS updates.

Still I wouldn't expect to see performance like is common on other platforms.

This is surely influenced by caching in the OS and in the SCSI controller
but I routinely transfer large files from linux to Windows NT box with
transfer rates at around 6 mbytes/sec.

>From [email-masked] Wed Mar 18 13:48:43 1998
Paul M. Fleming wrote:

> I'm look for 100BaseT PCI cards for Macintosh. I'm currently using Asante
> cards but their rather expense. What are other people using?
>
> Thanks
>
> Paul

I personally run screaming like a frightened little girl from Asante cards
in general.

Try 3Com...My boss says they're the best.

...Tho they're expensive too. 100baseT cards are painfully expensive to
begin with.

-Jeremiah Merkl
-University of Lethbridge Student Computer Lab