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From: terryl@tekcrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: DEC DELUA or Interlan N1010A ??
Message-ID: <1645@tekcrl.TEK.COM>
Date: Fri, 15-May-87 17:31:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekcrl.1645
Posted: Fri May 15 17:31:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 16-May-87 19:37:35 EDT
References: <552@hsi.UUCP> <7873@utzoo.UUCP> <916@nrcvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: terryl@tekcrl.tek.com
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 40

In article <916@nrcvax.UUCP> msd@minnie.UUCP (Marc S. Dye) writes:
><><><>
>
>One piece of information that may or may not be helpful:
>
>	The Interlan controller (NI1010A) operates at an
>	extremely degraded rate (like about 1/6th!) if not
>	using it's ROM-based Ethernet address.

     I didn't see the original article that made this claim, so I can only
ask a couple of questions:

     The NM-10 has two sets of commands: load physical address/set physical
address to default, and set/clear insert source address mode.

     The load physical address address command DISABLES the NM-10's physical
address recognition hardware, forcing the NM-10's processor to dismiss packets
whose physical address does not match that loaded by the load physical address
command(as quoted from an addendum to the NM-10 user's manual), so I can see
where there might be some speed degradation.

     The other two commands, set/clear insert source address mode, controls
whether the hardware or software provides the physical address as the source
address of transmitted frames (again, as quoted from the addendum). The manual
mentions that "substantial improvement in transmitting performance results
while the NM-10 is in this mode" (clear insert source address, i.e. it must
be provided by the software).

     So my question is this: which one are you talking about when you say
"the NM-10 operates at an extremely degraded rate...."?

>This is not usually an issue when Network Layer to Link Layer
>address mapping is performed by something like ARP (normal TCP/IP
>fare these days), but has caused trouble in multiple controller
>installations of XNS protocols, for example, where the host address
>is the same for all link layer interfaces and the mapping from
>XNS to Ethernet addresses is trivial.

     I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about multiple
ethernet cards on one machine???