Ethernet math (Was Re: MWC's Coherent - A Lemon...)

[Hwa Jin Bae]

To: uunet!pnet01.cts.com!jca
Subject: Re: Ethernet math (Was Re: MWC's Coherent - A Lemon...)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.os.minix,comp.unix.xenix
References: <2932 at crash.cts.com>

In comp.sys.ibm.pc you write:

>I shouldn't have to be an engineer at Novell  or 3 Com to get decent
>throughput on an ethernet, but it seems to me that you're saying that I have
>to be.  I don't build the networking boards nor do I write the drivers for
>them and if you have to spend time going in, ripping apart the ethernet
>driver, then that's more work that has to be done in the name of performance
>that should've been done by the vendor of the product.

>I'm not going to go and take apart everything on the ethernet at both the
>hardware and software level since it's not my job for one.  If you want to
>go and do it for me, be my guest.

>This wouldn't be the first time a vendor screwed up.  And it certainly
>won't be the last.

>Keep in mind that people often times can't optimize what they have because of
>time and/or money.  It's easy for you to say what needs to be done, but hand
>the customer the bill on what it costs to do it or change over to the optimal
>set up and they very quickly change their mind about upgrading.

>Or another even more important limitation, availability.  What if it just
>isn't plain available yet?  There isn't much you can do then.  A lot of people
>faced this problem when they wanted to upgrade from Netware SFT to Netware 386
>just after it came out.  A lot of hardware wasn't compatable with Netware 386
>since there were no drivers.  The driver structure in Netware 386 was redone
>completely and it was not compatable with its successors.

>Go ahead and preach about the optimal configuration, but when you're in that
>situation when you're in between a rock, a time limit, and a hard place you
>aren't so much concerned with getting it running in the optimal configuration,
>you're concerned with getting it running, period.
> 
>     // JCA


Here, you're talking about yet another point, keep avoiding the initial issue.
You were asserting that "in a real ethernet" throughput of more than 3Mbit/sec
is almost impossible, and that's the point people were trying to correct you
on.   You don't seem to have enough experience with ethernet, at least not
enough to make such definitive assertions, but still very unwilling to 
admit the obvious flaw in your statement, and thus insist on haranguing on 
your diatribe about various different issue completely unrelated to the
technical issue at hand: that of ethernet cable and boards actually being 
able to support 10Mbit/sec, with reasonable amount of engineering.  First,
you've tried to divert the issue by saying that PC's and Mac's connected
to the ethernet will certainly prevent having more than 3Mbit/sec throughput
on "any good day", and when proven wrong, you start talking "I don't
care whether you can, I can't here, so I don't care", and now the latest
strategy of yours is this point about "time limit" and "customer point of
view".  All I want is concrete data from you that will convince me that
your initial statement is correct.  That's the only point I'm arguing about.
Not the realities of the customer's situation and vendors screwing up their
products or having incompetent network administrators who don't know anything
about their networks while making some loud, noisy statements about something
they know nothing about.

Hwajin

hwajin at daahoud.wrs.com