Luc de Louw wrote: > something strange here: > > dmesg snipplet: > > eth0: RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet at 0xd09a2f00, 00:00:b4:a6:d2:30, IRQ > 9 > eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139A' > eth0: Setting 100mbps full-duplex based on auto-negotiated partner ability > 45e1. > > and then with mii-tool: > > eth0: 10 Mbit, half duplex, no link > > I got a xferspeed of approx. 4 Mbyte/s so it seems to be a bad 100mbps > link.... 4 Mbytes/s is, roughly translated, about 40 megabits/s. So i guess you are lucky :-) I had an 8139B and couldn't get more than that, with good short cables and a switch. Tried capturing DV video (roughly 3.5 Mbytes/s) to the linux server from a networked windows machine and didn't do any good, got more dropped frames than captured ones. I got a 3C905B, swapped the 8139B with that one and everything changed. Now i never loose a frame on long captures :-) So... there is a reason for the price premium on network cards, though i agree it shouldn't be that much. BTW, the windows machine has a 3c905. 8139's aren't just made up for heavy traffic loads, their FIFO's are small, they just can't manage themselves to work right on full duplex links (with full duplex work), don't have zerocopy, don't have hardware checksum either. The problem was hardly the CPU, was around 50-60% usage with the 8139B trying to capture DV, the disk was rarely moving (an IBM 75GXP) on a P3/550 cpu. With the 3com, it barely gets more than 30% usage. With mii-tool some boards don't have correct link reporting, so sometimes they are at the right speed/duplex, but just plainly say the same. Probably it's the net driver not recognizing the MII (transceiver) the board has. Snip from my machine: [gustavoz@indra gustavoz]$ mii-tool eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok eth1: autonegotiation failed, link ok eth2: 10 Mbit, half duplex, no link eth0 is the 3c905b eth1 is a DE450 (tulip driver) eth2 is the 8139B (currently unused) Check the tulip, it's connected to the adsl router/modem, working fine, though i'll never know the speed :-) Actually i know it, because the card is just 10 meg, but dunno if it's half or full duplex (probably full). Of course i'm not trying to promote 3com, it's just the ones i'm used to, and also the ones i can get here without much hassle. - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
