On Sat, 24 Jun 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>> I've seen reports where cheap PCI NE2000 clones can have
>> throughput as bad as 30-40% of nominal (where the rest of the
>> system can definitely handle it). But if you're not streaming
>> video or the like it shouldn't be a problem. It also depends
>> on the rest of the system, other people say that they get the
>> full 10 or 100 megabits in their situation.
>>>>> "Craig" == Craig Andrews <craig [at] fishbot.free-online.co.uk> writes:
Craig> Yes, I have seen this.
Craig> If only 2 machines are on a peer-peer network, it shouldn't
Craig> be that bad, should it?
Depends on the other hardware and the application. Using two of the
same cheap card in that situation is a pretty good bet, since that
will be the most likely configuration for development testing. The
PCI NE2000 is just plain a bad design, so I've heard, it's sort of the
Ethernet equivalent of a Winmodem.
My advice would be to buy a couple of cheap cards (a matched set, same
model and brand), but be prepared to throw them away when you are
thinking of adding more systems or trying really demanding
applications (streaming video, Beowulf).
>>>>> "Barrie" == Barrie Bremner <TheEnglishman [at] ecosse.net> writes:
Barrie> Mmm. I`m using a combination of a few cheap (15-20 quid)
Barrie> NE2000 clones and some old 3Com 509`s bought for 4 quid
Barrie> each out of the spare bits bin of a local computer shop.
Barrie> The whole thing runs quite happily.
Didn't say it wouldn't; just that in some situations it may not. Some
people have more demanding definitions of "work fine" than others do.
Probably the original poster is gonna be pretty relaxed---but he may
not be so relaxed in September after he's gotten a taste of high-speed
networking ;-) At that point, if he's using cheap cards, he should be
prepared to throw them away. (But I'm still using a _real_ ISA NE2000
-- probably 9-10 years old -- in one of my boxes; I have others where
I won't accept less than a 35 Mbit connection. He may never need to
throw those cards away. He may chuck them in disgust next week. Who
knows?)
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