Subject: Re: Hardware questions
To: Don Yuniskis" , "Julian C. Dunn <jdunn@aquezada.com>
From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>
List: port-sparc
Date: 11/26/2001 09:50:56
At 3:07 PM -0700 on 11/25/01, Don Yuniskis wrote:

>  The Classic has 10BaseT w/AUI.  The SS1+ and SS2 have AUI.
>  Rather than looking for two different kinds of cards, I
>  figure *use* the RJ45 on the classic for one I/F.  Then,
>  *add* an AUI/10Base2 NIC for the *other* I/F.  This makes
>  the best use of the existing ports on the Classic and
>  just requires adding at most a 10base2 xceiver (assuming the
>  NIC doesn't have a BNC already on it!)

	Just because you've got multiple sockets doesn't mean you 
actually have multiple interfaces.  I'm 99.99999999% certain that you 
will have just one built-in interface on these machines, although you 
may be lucky in terms of what sockets are provided for you to plug 
into.  Consider old 3Com 3C509-combo cards that had 10Base-5 AUI, 
10Base2, and 10BaseT all on the same card, even though it was just 
one interface -- you've probably got a similar situation.

	Solution: Use only 10BaseT interfaces, and for those machines 
which don't have built-in 10BaseT interfaces, either use an 
AUI/10BaseT transceiver, or buy a second NIC to use.


	Myself, I'm quite fond of Quad FastEthernet (QFE) cards -- four 
10/100Base-T interfaces in a single card.  Moreover, it will have a 
decent amount of on-board buffer space available, unlike the standard 
built-in interfaces you will find on most machines (you may not see a 
measurable performance hit with 10BaseT, but you will see a higher 
CPU loading as the main processor gets interrupted a lot more to 
handle data).

	For a router or firewall, you really, really want to have all 
interfaces running on add-in NICs, so that you can avoid this problem.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>

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