The ever helpful cjb and Mitch_Bradley directed me to the root of the problem, the USB-ethernet devices I am using are USB 1.1 which has horrible throughput. A USB-ethernet device that supports USB 2.0 should fix the problem.
<BryanWB> Mitch_Bradley: great, do u think I can buy a usb2 ethernet nic for under $50? budget is tight and I need these for 15 XS's <Mitch_Bradley> AX8817X and AX88772 are the chips <BryanWB> Mitch_Bradley: thanks <Mitch_Bradley> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=589 <BryanWB> Mitch_Bradley: is there any reason that USB-Ethernet is inherently unworkable or is it just a question of getting the right usb-ethernet nic? <Mitch_Bradley> USB 1.1 sucks rocks for ethernet because the polling for rx packets kills the throughput <cjb> BryanWB: no, the others are usb2 <cjb> what Mitch_Bradley said <BryanWB> Mitch_Bradley: so usb1.1 will totally crap out w/ 20 users ? <Mitch_Bradley> USB2.0 has much improved bandwidth and much lower latency for polling usb1.1 will totally crap out with 1 user <BryanWB> Mitch_Bradley: thanks a lot guys, you are saving my bacon <cjb> BryanWB: the number of users won't affect it, other than by sucking proportional to load <Mitch_Bradley> I didn't even bother supporting USB 1.1 ethernet chips in OFW. It's just not worth it. <cjb> anyway, yeah. just find an asix dongle. <Mitch_Bradley> try to buy a name brand device. The no-name ones often just don't work. On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 15:43 +0100, Martin Langhoff wrote: > On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Bryan Berry <br...@olenepal.org> wrote: > > We want to use the MSI Wind PC for the XS but it has one big problem. It > > only has 1 on-board NIC and no PCI slots. As you know, the XS requires 2 > > NIC's. We have tried several different USB NIC's and are having serious > > throughput problems. Is this issue one w/ the NIC or the fact that it is > > connected by USB? > > My main worry with USB-connected NICs would be reliability. If the NIC > is reliable, but the throughput a bit below-par, you can still > probably use it as the WAN NIC -- the throughput is likely to be > constrained upstream anyway. > > - When you say throughput problems... what are you getting? How bad > is it? Even if limited, would it be appropriate for the WAN port? > > - The problem may be specific to the driver or NIC hardware -- is > there any discussion on the kernel dev list about it? > > - The problem may be with the USB bus on the MS Wind, hardware or > drivers. Perhaps testing for bus throughput or interrupt handling > helps? > > - Have you tested the reliability of the devices? This may be a larger > problem. > > cheers, > > > martin -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org _______________________________________________ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel