[plug] 1000Mb Networks/NICs

[Nick Bannon]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2002 at 10:16:23AM +0800, andre.thomas at switch.aust.com wrote:
> Has anyone had any luck with 1000Mb NICs on Debian/Linux?  We have two 
> Woody boxes each with an Alfa 1000Mb NIC to syncronise data between them 
> (via what I believe is a correct 1000Mb crossover cable).  I have tried 
> two drivers (dpm & ns83820) but each still only give speeds expected of a 
> 100Mb card.  Googling hasn't helped us successfully thus far.

I found a CSIRO link about setting up a MOSIX cluster ;
http://www.marine.csiro.au/~sakov/cluster/cluster/cluster.html

What is the chipset - National Semiconductor 83820 ? The specs from ;
http://www.alfa.com.tw/product_network_gigabit.htm

...look promising in terms of interrupt management and checksum
offloading, but by and large, getting gigabit speeds out of gigabit
cards in a PC can still be tricky, and some hardware, documentation and
drivers are much better than others.

How much did they cost, and where from? What about yours, Tony?

Nick.

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# Gigabit Ethernet NIC:

Alfa AGC3002, 1000Base-T PCI NIC, supports 10/100/1000 Mbps
auto-negotiation, supports full-duplex mode with network data rate to
20/200/2000 Mbps, built-in FIFO buffers. 
[...]
# Set up driver for AGC3002

This was a pain. The native driver could be compiled for 2.2.x kernels
only. The driver for ns83820 chipset in 2.4.18 and 2.4.19 kernels worked
over 100 Mbs network, but not over 1000 Mbs. The driver ns820.c from
scyld site seemed to work, but generated errors, and we used to loose
processes with it. At the moment, we use driver for DGE-500T, which
seems to work OK. Therefore, download and compile the driver for
DGE-500T. Run ``install -m 644 dpm.o /lib/modules/`uname -r`/net/''. Add
``insmod dpm'' to /etc/init.d/boot.local.

    * Note: do not add ``MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");'' to dp.c. While this
    fixes warning during the module boot, it makes the cluster
    unstable.

    * Note: You may wish to compile driver for the server with
    ``-D__SMP__'' flag. This significantly (by about 15%) improves
    throughput from server to client via gigabit subnet.
-----

-- 
     Nick Bannon      | "I made this letter longer than usual because
  nick-sig at rcpt.to    | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal
http://linux.conf.au/ |  Australian Linux Technical Conference, 2003