*BSD News Article 98374


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From: Ajay Shekhawat <ajay-bsd@cedar.Buffalo.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Network Performance
Date: 24 Jun 1997 19:09:52 -0400
Organization: CEDAR Research
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Richard J. Finn <rfinn@Houston-InterWeb.COM> wrote:
» 	You know... I tried to install Linux on one of my machines to try it
» out.  It couldn't find my primary network device, while FreeBSD had no
» problem at all.  Seems to me it's a little hard to have a better TCP/IP
» stack if you can't even get the network interface up.  Shrug.
»
» 	I have used it and I haven't seem anything that really impressed me.  
»

Not to start any flamewars here, but we've had the opposite experience
here. But before you turn the flamethrower on, please read on.... :-)
Here's our setup:
	ASUS P/ PT55TP4N MB
	Pentium 166
	64MB EDO RAM
	Mitsumi IDE CDROM drive
	Adaptec 2940UW SCSI card with a Conner 4GB SCSI drive
	2  SMC 9332BDT Etherpower 10/100 cards with the DEC 21140-AC chipset

Linux (RedHat 4.1) installed fine on this system from the CDROM. Just
needed to add the latest tulip driver (0.76) and it was up and running,
routing between our two subnets.

With FreeBSD 2.2.1, we've been having all sorts of problems. For one,
the CDROM drive doesn't get detected. We've tried all versions of boot 
floppies (upto 3.0-970618-SNAP), including those in the "newer" 
subdirectory (if they exist). No luck with the CDROM.

Next, the ethernet cards go down once FreeBSD probes them; the LED on the 
switch (they are connected to a Cat5000 100bT switch) and the card goes off.
So, we pulled the cards and installed a 3C509. The kernel recognized the
card, and we were on our way. We put the CDROM on one of our Solaris
boxes, and tried to install it via FTP from that box. But the FTP 
was at about 1kB/s! Needless to say, it installed all night and was
done sometime the next morning.

Then, we pulled out the 3C509 and installed the SMC cards again, this time
with the latest "de" drivers from 3AM Software. The cards come up fine,
but a strange thing happens: after some activity, the card just stops
communicating. Trying to ping outside hosts gives, after some attempts,
the following error:

PING 128.205.XXX.XXX (128.205.XXX.XXX): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No buffer space available
ping: wrote 128.205.XXX.XXX 64 chars, ret=-1
ping: sendto: No buffer space available
ping: wrote 128.205.XXX.XXX 64 chars, ret=-1

The thing is, just bouncing the interface ("ifconfig de0 down" followed
immediately with a "ifconfig de0 up") fixes the problem for a few more
minutes.

Anyone willing to figure out what the problem is?

Thanks,

Ajay

-- 
ajay-bsd@cedar.Buffalo.EDU