Re: Pentium hardware and 100 Mbps Ethernet

sthaug@nethelp.no
Fri, 27 Mar 1998 14:31:02 +0100

> I'm looking for netperf measurements on Pentium hardware and 100 Mbps
> Ethernet, because it should be possible to do some direct comparisons
> of different stacks (e.g. FreeBSD TCP/IP, Linux TCP/IP, QNX TCP/IP),
> but I can't find anything in the database. I've heard of figures
> floating around (60 Mbps for FreeBSD - we've measured this anyway);
> it would be nice to get some solid results.

Browse the results for "Fast Ethernet" network type, and you should
find at least FreeBSD (I submitted results :-).

The results for FreeBSD-2.2 are essentially:

- A P-133 can *receive* a full 100 Mbps stream, but can't quite send
it.

- A PPro-200 can send a full 100 Mbps stream and still have ample CPU
to spare.

Note that the measurements of mine that are in the database are based
on the defaults, which has with RFC 1323 *and* RFC 1644 options turned
on. This gives you a payload of 1440 bytes in each Ethernet frame, not
1460.

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no