Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!sri-spam!rutgers!sunybcs!boulder!stan!jmoore From: jmoore@stan.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Smart Ethernet boards Message-ID: <144@stan.UUCP> Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 11:34:30 EDT Article-I.D.: stan.144 Posted: Mon Jul 6 11:34:30 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jul-87 06:25:33 EDT References: <283@sering.cwi.nl> <8212@utzoo.UUCP> <17346@amdcad.AMD.COM> Organization: SAE Inc., Longmont, Colorado Lines: 27 Summary: Request for a good dumb ENET board In article <8212@utzoo.UUCP>, henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: > > WE want to know about experiences with "smart" Ethernet boards, like > > the Interlan (Micom) NP100 or the Excelan Exos 204. > > I have no direct experience with these things, but I asked a similar > question a while ago; perhaps a quick summary of the replies I got will > suffice for this one. > > The general consensus was that, barring the special situation of a dumb > operating system which cannot be fitted with its own networking code, > the benefits of "smart" boards are doubtful. Henry goes on with a good explanation of why the smart boards do not pan out in practice. My experiences certainly back-up this conclusion so my question is: can anyone recommend a good "dumb" Enet board for the VMEbus? The perfect board would be a full A32/D32 device with a *fast* 32 bit wide DMA path. The board should present a flexible scatter/gatter interface for direct manipulation of data from mbufs or streams. I *do not* want to run protocols on the board; I just want the board to get the data between memory and the wire as quickly as possible without causing the host to copy or reformat data. Jim Moore SAE, Longmont Colorado hao!boulder!stan!jmoore