ethernet and switches, was Re: [rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 22, 2004, at 10:07 PM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> Still, I love the idea of circuit-switched networks, instead of packet
> switched ones like ethernet.  Mmmm, low latency.

   Yeah, it'd be great if the cell size were larger than 53 bytes.  A 
single keystroke in telnet, for example, results in something like a 
72-byte backet (or somewhere around that range).  ATM just doesn't do 
TCP/IP very well at all.

> Anyways, unswitched FDDI, like unswitched ethernet, still doesn't scale
> well.

   Uhhhhh, where did you hear that?  Media utilization rates greater 
than 95% are commonplace on FDDI.  It was built to scale, and it does.

> Compared to Myrinet, it doesn't suck, and compared to Quadrix, seeing
> its price doesn't make you go blind.  Right now, IB is faster than
> Myrinet (and cheaper).  Of course, the bandwith is wasted unless you've
> got something with PCI-X slots, which rules out all of the Rescuable
> computers I know about.

   Can I get an InfiniBand switch for the same twenty bucks that bought 
me a Myrinet switch last fall? ;)

> <set mode=$home>
> FDDI (and it's slower friend, Token Ring) are fun, but not useful for
> $work_stuff.

   Wrong.  Sorry, but dead wrong.

       -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke