Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!MONK.PROTEON.COM!jas
From: jas@MONK.PROTEON.COM (John A. Shriver)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re(2): maximum Ethernet throughput
Message-ID: <8803141508.AA25552@monk.proteon.com>
Date: 14 Mar 88 15:08:22 GMT
References: <8803120316.AA02125@violet.ICO.ISC.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 17

I quick look with adb at SunOS 3.4 reveals that Sun is initializing
the Intel 82586 Ethernet chip per Ethernet specifications for
interfame spacing.  The instruction:

_iedefaultconf+0x5a:	movb	#0x60,a5@(0xb)

is moving an interfame spacing of 96 bits (9.6 microseconds) to the
interfame spacing (offset 0xb) field in the Configure command block
for the 82586.  Confirm this for yourself on your Sun.

They are not cheating.  There are simply Ethernet boards that crash
trying to do address compares at full speed, and there are host
implementations (DECnet-VAX) that assume that the Ethernet interface
will always send packets than they can generate them.  These
implementations have Ethernet-related bugs--the Sun does not.  The Sun
proves to be a good tool for finding these bugs.

Enough said?