> I would recommend to use another brand such as the EtherExpress 10/100
> or a NIC based on a DEC Tulip chipset (although I do not know which
> Tulip chipset is best)
intel boards are in the same overpriced range as 3com stuff.
there are lots of tulip/tulip-clones out there in the $20 range
that work very well. even the rtl8193-based cards ($Canadian 19,
so $US 13 or so) are very good, though with a marginally higher
CPU load.
> about the CPU load but I could not find any, so my statements are
3c9xx's can do packet checksums in hardware; Intel boards can too,
but Intel is open-hostile in failing to document their hardware.
it's quite debatable whether checksums are relevant, though, since
most packets wind up touched quickly anyway, and once they're in
cache, performance is not an issue. the checksum-and-copy loop
runs about as fast as just copy, and neither are CPU-limited.
tulip cards are as fully bus-mastering as intel or 3com cards,
but rtl8193's (etc) require more copying. again, that copying is
in some ways not harmful, since it prefetches a packet which will
immediately be consumed...
I'm quite happy with cheap rtl8193 cards.
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