Subject: Re: ne2000 (driver) performance
To: Erik Rungi <blackbox@openface.ca>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: port-i386
Date: 04/10/1999 16:44:00
On Fri, Apr 09, 1999 at 04:54:56PM -0400, Erik Rungi wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> 
> I'm using a NetBSD-1.3.3/i386 box as a router with 4 ne2000 PCI cards in it,
> and I'm beginning to see occasional:
> 
> Apr  9 16:07:17 bob /netbsd: ne5: warning - receiver ring buffer overrun
> 
> Since there is quite a bit more potential capacity for traffic going through
> this things, I'm beginning to get a little worried.
> 
> Does anyone know if the ne2000 pci driver is Known To Suck?  Or maybe its just
> my cards (Kingston KNE30's I believe).

NE2000 uses PIO trasfers to read/write datas, this really limit the bandwidth.
Better get DMA-capable NICs.
I have 6 ThunderLAN-based NICs in a p200 here, (5 in 100Mbs mode, one unused),
I don't have any problems (well, I get some underruns when a lot of data
scrolls on the display, or when running X, but I think the fault is the
old ISA video board which looks up the bus for too long. In normal
operations, no problems).

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
--