[comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc] NE1000 Clarkson PD strangeness

mah@nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at (Michael Haberler) (03/06/91)

I ran into a strange problem today.

I bought a NE-1000 clone (I guess the manufacturer's name is 'GTC'). 

I use Rev.8 of the CU packet driver for the NE1000, on top of which
I run NOS KA9Q, version 910201.

Doing a ping, the IP adress is resolved properly with ARP intothe
destination ethernet adress. The Echo request message gets sent, but the 
Echo reply gets dropped, with a icmpInError in KA9Q. 

Now the ka9q source indicates this error counter is incremented with either
a ICMP message coming via a link-level broadcast, or a wrong header
checksum. 

The packet trace looks fine. However, it looks like the NE1000 packet driver
(or my card?) returns the wrong length on a packet receive (which would
explain the failed checksum test). 

At least a preliminary comparison of packet traces with a 3c501 pd lead 
me to believe that the NE1000 pd returns wrong length fields on receive 
(I *think* it's 2 bytes too long on the Echo reply receive, I'll have 
to check that again.)

The NS8390 is Rev. C. I also tried version 6 of the NE1000 driver - same
effect.

Any hints on what might be causing this?

- michael

ps.: I'm not sure on what to do with the DMA channel jumpers on the NE10000
board, but either way - no effect.

-- 
Michael Haberler	mah@nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at, mah@awiwuw11.bitnet
University of Economics and Business Administration 
Augasse 2-6,  A-1090 Vienna, Austria		
Tel: +43 (222) 313-36 x4796 (9-18 CET) 	Fax 347-555

romkey@ASYLUM.SF.CA.US (John Romkey) (03/07/91)

Returning a length that's too long shouldn't hurt things with a good
IP implementation (which KA9Q is). IP carries its own length field in
its header; the IP layer tends to make sure that there are at least
enough bytes and then go ahead and process the packet using the IP
length instead of the hardware length.

This is necessary in part because ethernet has a minimum of 60 bytes,
which is longer than many IP packets would be.
		- john romkey			Epilogue Technology
USENET/UUCP/Internet:  romkey@asylum.sf.ca.us	FAX: 415 594-1141