heidnes@spurv.runit.sintef.no (Hans Eidnes) (12/03/90)
A hardware question for those who are familiar with different ethernet
adapters on the PC or PS/2.
Do these four cards handle multicast packets differently in hardware?
3c523 (MCA)
ni9210 (MCA)
ni5210 (ISA)
wd8003e (ISA)
- Hans Eidnes e-mail : heidnes@lise.unit.no
Centre for Computer Aided Learning dsl-unit@unit.no
The University of Trondheim phone : (+47-7-59) 47 88
Norway
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- Hans Eidnes e-mail : heidnes@lise.unit.no
Senter for datast|ttet l{ring dsl-unit@unit.no
Universitetet i Trondheim telefon : (+47-7-59) 47 88dale@interlan.Interlan.COM (Dale B) (12/06/90)
In article <1990Dec3.145208.25230@ugle.unit.no> heidnes@spurv.runit.sintef.no (Hans Eidnes) writes: >A hardware question for those who are familiar with different ethernet >adapters on the PC or PS/2. > >Do these four cards handle multicast packets differently in hardware? > >3c523 (MCA) >ni9210 (MCA) >ni5210 (ISA) >wd8003e (ISA) > >- Hans Eidnes e-mail : heidnes@lise.unit.no The question is not real clear, but I believe the answer is yes. I think the wd8003 & 3c523 use the Nat. Semi. 8390 NIC Lan chip, while the ni9210/5210 use the Intel 82586. The 8390 uses a 64 bit mask to imperfectly filter multicast addresses from the 6 MSBs of the CRC of the address. The 82586 takes a list of multicast addresses to be accepted. I've always thought the 82586 did perfect filtering, but re-reading the data book indicates I may have wrong. Apparently the 82586 generates a 64 bit hash table from the address list and uses bits 2-7 of the CRC to filter. BTW often drivers using the 8390 implement perfect filtering in the driver code and drivers using the 82586 generally do not. Dale