Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!morrison
From: morrison@accuvax.nwu.edu (Vance Morrison )
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Fast ethernet card for PC
Message-ID: <921@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 89 16:52:46 GMT
References: <11306@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: morrison@accuvax.nwu.edu (Vance Morrison )
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
Lines: 19

Hello,

Every ethernet card I know has some dedicated hardware that picks
bits off the ethernet, compares the first 48 bits to the its address
(an the broadcasts and multicast address) and then does something
with it.  These operations it can do at the full 10Mbits/sec (after all
10MBits/sec is not fast at all for dedicated hardware).  

To test this theory, I created quick program for a fast PC that generated
traffic as fast as it could.  Using a protocol analyser I found that 
the traffic generater was using about %90 of the network bandwidth.  I
then tried to ping another PC on the same net using a wd8003 card.  No
packets were lost.  

The conclusion.  Any ethernet card worth it salt will NOT drop packets
just because the network is loaded, it MAY drop packets if to many packets
destined for it arrive to quickly.

Vance