>> I can add that we use 3Com 905TX cards and have had enormous problems on
>> 10Mb lines (these cards seem to be enormously sensitive to
>> hubs/wiring/etc, at least with the linux driver). One typical symptom is
>> that the card will suddenly think it is connected to a 100Mb line,
>> effectively taking the machine off the net as the hub is only 10Mb.
>
>I've seen that behavior from the 3C905TX on windows machines, so I don't
>think it's a Linux driver issue.
i had quite a few problems with these cards (i think actually 3c905B-tx)
on 10 and 100mb networks. once i read the mailing list for the driver
on donald becker's site, all was explained if not cleared up. mine refuse
to autodetect 100mb on a cisco cat5500 switch, so i made the driver modular
and forced 100mb (which of course breaks the net if some yahoo decides to
plug his computer into a different (10mb) port for yuks---it happened :/),
and they are singing along sweetly.
the biggest problem i've had with them is that a warm reboot from 95 leaves
them inoperable under linux. you have to actually power off the machine
('shutdown' from win95 works on the machine types i have, but according to
the mailing list archives, some people with wonkier ATX-based machines have
to physically remove the power cable as a fix) between 95 and linux to fully
reset the cards. according to donald becker, 3com bowed to win95 in a way
that makes it virtually impossible for linux to support these cards
completely. sigh.
at any rate, now that i have the kinks worked out, i get 11415k/s between
two BX-based PII's with these cards.
i've seen slightly better (~11500k/s) between eepro100b's, but the on those
tests the driver took up 9% of the available cpu time, vs 2% from the
3c905's. with most of the applications these machines are used for, an
extra 1% bandwidth is not worth the 7% cpu sacrifice. but then, with these
machines outpacing the cray on some jobs now that the jobs are tuned for
them, people aren't really kvetching =)
anyway, i had far less initial trouble with the intel eepro 100b's. i
still need to try a tulip-based card before i buy anymore of anything
else.
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