Re: [patch] ns83820 0.17

Trever L. Adams
2002-03-12T18:12:31Z

On Tue, 2002-03-12 at 06:15, David S. Miller wrote:

> Use a cross-over cable to play with Jumbo frames, that is
> what I do :-)
>
> Later this week I'll rerun tests on all the cards I have
> (Acenic, Sk98, tigon3, Natsemi etc.) with current drivers
> to see what it looks like with both jumbo and non-jumbo
> mtus over gigabit.

I no longer have the original, so I will just have to respond to this
one, since it is related. I know I know nearly nothing about
networking, but here has been my thinking.

David, you believe we don't need NAPI. You believe we perform fine
without it. Here is my question. A PCI bus, IRC, has about 500
Megabytes/sec of bandwidth. A full blown gigabit Ethernet stream should
be around 133 Megabytes/sec. Sounds to me like a PC could act easily
(As far as bandwidth is concerned) as a 4 to 5 port gigabit Ethernet
router.

How well does this work with NAPI and how well does it work without? Is
NAPI a gain here?

Maybe there are other issues involved that I am unaware of, if there
are, I would still like to see how the theoretical answers pan out.

Thank you,
Trever Adams