Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!uunet!mcvax!enea!kth!draken!ragge
From: ragge@nada.kth.se (Ragnar Sundblad)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: What is EtherTalk speed?
Message-ID: <701@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 17 Dec 88 18:37:43 GMT
References: <1731@cayman.COM> <12454674092.150.A.ALDERSON@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: ragge@nada.kth.se (Ragnar Sundblad)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 19

In article <12454674092.150.A.ALDERSON@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU> A.ALDERSON@MACBETH.STANFORD.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>You've missed something.  Most ethernets aren't populated with just two hosts.
>The wire is going to be busy most of the time, so you have to read everything
>on the wire to see if you are missing anything.  That sounds like a dedicated
An ethernet busy most of the time is pretty unusable. Actually, a load higher
than ~35-40 percent is absolutely maximum for getting things through.
But, of course, you can consider that as a busy ethernet.
>processor (of any type) to me.

>A dedicated 8MHz 68000 could JUST keep up.  It isn't going to have time to do
>much in the way of processing.
Probably, but this task is mostly done by a special designed coprocessor,
often taking care of both address filtering and moving packets between the
network and the host computer's memory, such as the NS8390 (as on
Apples/3Coms EtherTalk card), or the Intel 82586.

>Rich Alderson
>Stanford University
Ragnad Sundblad.