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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