Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!VAX.FTP.COM!jbvb
From: jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Re: Choosing network boards
Message-ID: <8802262154.AA15244@vax.ftp.com>
Date: 26 Feb 88 21:54:08 GMT
References: <4660@ecsvax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 27

FTP does sell source, but our price is rather high for academic users
(although we have done business with several large academic sites).
Sorry to say, our inventory of hardware drivers represents enough of our
competitive advantage that we must value it highly.

We sell the executable package for $400 quantity 1, $175/copy for Site
Licenses for between 20 & 49 copies, less per copy for larger quantities.
Programming libraries (including sockets) are available for Microsoft C.
We have an academic discount, too.  Call us, or send us a USMail address
and we'll send out the price list, etc.

Regarding the underlying technical issues, the 3C501 is an old design,
doomed to be slow on loaded nets and with fast hosts because of its
1-buffer architecture.  It also has trouble with transceivers which
generate heartbeat (like the DEC DELNI).  Any other network card we
support is faster than the 3C501 (I'm not sure it is the slowest available,
but it is the slowest I have used).

The 3C503 is definitely better (although not fastest, in my opinion). 
Other "3rd generation" cards with a similar architecture include the
Western Digital WD8003, the MICOM-Interlan NI5210, the Univation NC-516,
the Ungermann-Bass PC-NIC and the National Semiconductor/Novell card.  Our
driver for the 3C503 is about average among this group.  I don't know how
other developers rank it.

James VanBokkelen
FTP Software Inc.
(617) 868-4878