Subject: Re: ConneXion Ethernet Board
To: Ignatios Souvatzis <ignatios@theory.cs.uni-bonn.de>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>
List: port-amiga
Date: 11/28/1997 07:52:52
On Fri, 28 Nov 1997, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

: > It could very well be true. I tried sending a 2 MB JPEG file between my Amiga
: > (NetBSD) and a P166MMX running NT, 5 MB/s in one direction, 3-4 MB/s in the
: > other, according to ws_ftp.
: 
: Thats ___impossible___.
: 
: 10 Mbit/s Ethernet has a maximum transfer speed of about 1 Megabytes/s, _raw_.

It's likely that the test program was measuring mega*bits*, not mega*bytes*.

This is something not well described by communications products (modems,
lan cards, ...) manufacturers.  In almost all cases, communications devices
measure in bits or Megabits ("Mb").  We're used to talking about RAM and
disks, so we often refer to Megabytes ("MB").  1 Megabyte = 8 Megabits, so a
10Mb/s Ethernet card is capable of at most about 1.25MB/s.  (Actually
almost precisely 1MB/s because of protocol overhead.)  If a card is
doing 5Mb/s (5 Megabits/s), it is doing 0.675MB/s (0.675 Megabytes/s).

=====
== Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Business tv@lucent.com)
== Vierling's Axiom: The revolution won't be televised; it will be posted.