cyuan@tcad07.intel.com (C P Yuan) (07/27/90)
Hi, I am asking this question for my wife. She is looking for an ETHERNET card for her intel 302 box running Interactive UNIX. On the Interactive brochure, a few nonintelligent boards like 3COM, WD are listed. It also supports a few intelligent ETHERNET controller from CMC etc. Maybe this has already been asked before, what is the difference between a non-intelligent board and an intelligent board ? She is planning to run X-window stuff on the system and hook up to a network of a uVAX and a few other 386s and 286 running DOS. Anyone has a suggestion for a good ETHERNET card with this configuration ? Thanks in advance. Please E-mail. +----------------------------------------------+ | Chen-Ping Yuan (cyuan@td2cad.intel.com) | | Intel Co., SC9-35 | | P.O. Box 58125 | | Santa Clara, CA 95052-8125 | | TEL: (408)-765-9893 | +----------------------------------------------+
dougm@ico.isc.com (Doug McCallum) (07/30/90)
In article <3293@td2cad.intel.com> cyuan@tcad07.intel.com (C P Yuan) writes: ... >Maybe this has already been asked before, what is the difference between >a non-intelligent board and an intelligent board ? She is planning to run >X-window stuff on the system and hook up to a network of a uVAX and a few >other 386s and 286 running DOS. Anyone has a suggestion for a good ETHERNET >card with this configuration ? Since this comes up periodically, I thought I would attempt an answer. The simple answer is that the dumb boards only know how to process the Ethernet protocol and depend upon the operating system to provide the higher level protocols. The intelligent boards can have the higher level protocols, running on the board and not in the operating system. The theory is that off-loading the protocols from the host is more efficient. The problem with the simplistic answer is that it doesn't tell you anything about which approach might be better. The answer to that is not as simple. For a 386 system that is only going to be lightly to moderately loaded, the dumb board approach will usually perform as well or better than the intelligent approach. This is because the 386 system will usually have plenty of spare cycles for processing the network protocols. On a VERY heavily loaded system, the intelligent board approach may begin to perform better than the dumb boards. Many of the intelligent boards have fairly slow processors on them in comparison to the 386. These boards may or may not help under the loaded conditions. Also, if the system is so loaded that it cannot handle the dumb boards, the intelligent ones probably won't appear any better in any case. I personally prefer using the dumb boards. They tend to cost a lot less and perform at least as well. You can also more readily support multiple protocol stacks simultaneously. With the intelligent boards you don't always have that option - you can only get what the vendor supplies. Sometimes you have the option of multiple stacks on the intelligent board, sometimes you don't. The dumb boards also allow for using multiple boards and implementing a router. Of the dumb boards supported, or at least have drivers, the only one I would specifically recommend to avoid is the 3COM 3C501. The 3C503 works fine. The WD, Ungermann-Bass and Interlan dumb boards also work fine. Performance is pretty close for all of them. If you take price into account, the WD looks very good. Hope this has been of some help, Doug McCallum Interactive Systems Corp. dougm@ico.isc.com