At 3:05 AM -0700 on 11/26/01, Don Yuniskis wrote:

>  The problem isn't which *one* media connection to use -- rather,
>  how best to get one 10baseT and one 10base2 connection ON TWO
>  SEPARATE I/F's on the same box.

	Ahh, okay.  Yeah, that's gonna hurt.  I don't see any way around 
getting at least one extra NIC per machine that needs an interface of 
each type, and possibly two extra NICs.  I know of NICs that have 
multiple 10Base-T interfaces on a single card, but I don't know of 
any that provide more than one interface on a single card when you 
require 10Base-2 (they may have multiple media types available, 
however).

	On those machines with only AUI available built-in, you're going 
to either have to use a transceiver (of one type or another), or 
you're going to have to get two NICs.

>  If you note in my previous comments, I don't run CAT5 between
>  machines -- RG58 instead (for reasons explained elsewhere).
>  So, having 4 RJ45's on 4 I/F's is just 3 *wasted* connections
>  for me  :-/

	Sorry, I missed that part.

>  Are you stating that the network interface on the motherboard is
>  implemented in an inferior manner?  I.e. no DMA, etc.?

	That's been my experience, yes.  On the networks I've worked on, 
we never used the built-in interface for most of our machines -- we 
always bought a good-quality dedicated NIC.  Not a single 
manufacturer that I know of will put the extra memory and other chips 
required into having a decent built-in NIC on the motherboard -- it 
may just be pennies per board, but they're still too cheap to do it.

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

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