Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Smart Ethernet boards Message-ID: <8255@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 14:38:04 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.8255 Posted: Mon Jul 6 14:38:04 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jul-87 14:38:04 EDT References: <283@sering.cwi.nl> <8212@utzoo.UUCP> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 18 > If the on-board TCP/IP imposes more load on the CPU than an off-board > TCP/IP, then something is radically wrong with the design... Yes, the decision to use an on-board TCP/IP is a mistake! :-) Seriously, measure the overhead of talking to the board before you make such a sweeping statement. It's considerable, I'm told. And TCP/IP is not inherently a very costly protocol to implement off-board. > For small systems with 80386 and 68020 class CPUs, I would think that > an on-board TCP/IP with similar CPU and decent memory buffers would give > optimum performance... Given that we have a similar CPU and a large amount of memory, why not go for a dumb Ethernet board and a dual-CPU main processor? That's probably a better use of the second CPU. -- Mars must wait -- we have un- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology finished business on the Moon. {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry