Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!CLASH.CISCO.COM!lougheed
From: lougheed@CLASH.CISCO.COM
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: TCP/IP over FDDI
Message-ID: <8811200734.AA16682@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 20 Nov 88 03:29:45 GMT
References: <8811190332.AA13232@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 12

No, a 13 byte MAC header is not a good idea if you want your protocols to
run fast on modern processors.

There are ways around this, however.  Design your FDDI interface to
optionally insert a pad byte on reception and delete a leading pad byte on
transmission.  Then you have a performance win if people use the eight byte
SNAP header a la RFC-1042 and a performance problem if people use the simple
three byte 802.2 LLC header.  Now at least you can choose which protocol
suite is going to take the performance hit.

Kirk Lougheed
cisco Systems