In Ethernet-HOWTO I can read: "Bus Master Direct Memory Access (e.g. LANCE, DEC 21040) Pro: Frees up the CPU during the data transfer, can string together buffers, can require little or no CPU time lost on the ISA bus. Most of the bus-mastering linux drivers now use a `copybreak' scheme where large packets are put directly into a kernel networking buffer by the card, and small packets are copied by the CPU which primes the cache for subsequent processing." Thus, in case of full bus mastering the advantage is that the device can make complex operations (using the bus adress) without the help of the CPU, right? The advantage is that CPU can do other things. My question is why using CPU for small packets? Guillaume -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
