Linux router (don't laugh) WAS:Re: test
Jim Shankland
jas at flyingfox.com
Wed Oct 28 18:06:43 UTC 1998
Znyx (www.znyx.com) and Adaptec both make quad cards based on
the DEC Tulip chip. I think Intel has a dual 82558 card. Expect
to pay a substantial premium over the per-interface cost of single
cards. You have to weigh that against the convenience/efficiency/etc.
of getting all those ports into one box.
Can't say whether these will work with Linux. I use FreeBSD. I have
one box (a Pentium 133, if I recall correctly) with 14 Ethernet interfaces:
3 quad cards, 1 single, and an ISA NE-2000 clone on a particularly
lightly used network. Works fine.
The limiting factor ends up being PCI bus bandwidth. You'll be hard
pressed to squeeze more than 100-150 Mb/s of total throughput out
of the router, since every bit takes two trips across the PCI bus:
from the device to main memory, and back. If you can figure out
how to diddle IP headers while the packet is in the card's buffers,
and then do a card-to-card PCI transfer (i.e., without going to main
memory), you can probably do a bit better. I haven't tried this,
so consider it a hypothesis.
Jim Shankland
Flying Fox Computer Systems, Inc.
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