[Malvern] More Networking Questions

[Ian Pascoe]

Rik

Most of the stuff I found was bleating about  either the drivers, or not
getting the as published speeds.

I found other articles that went a little over my head, technically ,
relating to research on bridging a twin port card to provide double the
potential ethernet access speed vs using them as two single connections.
And some really esoteric stuff about the super high band stuff we talked
about at the GMH last time.

As for multiple ports on a card what about the stuff on routerboards.com?

E

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Forster [mailto:rick at forster.uklinux.net]
Sent: 19 September 2007 22:12
To: ianpascoe at btinternet.com
Cc: Malvern at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [Malvern] More Networking Questions


Short answer: Don't know and I doubt there would be much in it (apart
from cost, space and driver issues).

But, I expect some low latency, high performance routing/firewalling
tricks could be played if you could get a multi-port version of this:
http://www.killernic.com/
A network card which runs linux and takes over the OS's network stack.
Essentially I'm thinking that if the traffic is coming in and going out
on different ports on the same card then you could get benefits if you
can process the traffic on the card itself. But if you have to process
the traffic (make routing decisions) in the CPU then it doesn't matter
whether you have 2 cards or 2 ports on one card.

But you can't get a multi-port version so this is academic (and chuffin'
expensive at £180 on play.com).

What have you found then Ian? Which arguments seem plausible and which
are totally hatstand?

Rick

PS It's harder to make plumbing mistakes if you have very different
network cards. Eg I have a D-Link PCI card and a SIS motherboard
interface. When I'm setting up networking I don't have to think "Which
cable goes in which port?" because it's much more obvious which is
which. But then, that's something you only have to get right once and
then you leave it alone.



Ian Pascoe wrote:
> Hi Folks
>
> Simple one this!
>
> I've found plenty of resource on the net regarding this question, but most
> of it appears to be personal opinion, and I wondered if anyone out there
had
> a definitive answer.
>
> Apart from cost, and storage space in a PC, which is better, to have a
twin
> port PCI ethernet card., or two single cards?
>
> E
>
>
>
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