[rescue] Re: Fast Ethernet vs. SS2

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, November 12, 2002 at 14:03:20 (-0600), Mike Hebel wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Re: Fast Ethernet vs. SS2
>
> A packet yes but I'm referring to whole data streams - after all there 
> are very few files that can fit in one ethernet packet.

You can only send packets to an ethernet interface, not data streams.
Everything's broken up into chewable chunks.  :-)

(even disk-I/O is done by the "packet" -- I think you're thinking to in
too much of a single-task mindset)

> Don't anyone take this the wrong way but I have a hard time believing 
> that all the driver/kernel developers understand the hardware 
> completely.

Huh?  The most ethernet cards which are capable of onboard hardware
assisted processing are quite new on the market and only very recently
have some of them been "opened" up sufficiently with non-proprietary
documentation that we can actually start to make use of some of their
features.  (Others are still very proprietary, such as some of Intel's
high-end stuff -- they're still under very tight NDA.)

>  I think that if they did, most of the optimization would be 
> easy to implement up-front during the design process.  I think they see 
> with microscopes and forget the "whole" for the most part.  Again - only 
> an opinion and IANASD.

Remember we're talking about existing systems and pretty complex systems
software here -- systems software that's more or less "legacy" code
(even in Linux for the most part)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;           <woods at robohack.ca>
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