Alteon ACEnic card [GA620]

[Michael Stein]

> My measured bandwidth on two-cpu machines running Linux 2.2.16, with
> default tuning and 9000 byte MTU, tops out at 615 Mbps.  I'm sure this
> could be increased with a little bit of work.

I just yesterday received two Netgear GA620 cards.  First "netperf
-H" showed about 120 Mbps, changing the buffer sizes got in the 400+
Mbps range.  This was only a first functional test with "stock" drivers
from Linux 2.2.14 and no driver parameters.  I did try them both directly
coupled and through a Cisco-5000 switch (same subnet) and the bandwidth
didn't seem to change.  Haven't measured the higher MTU, this was all
at 1500 on non-SMP Pentium III 500 Mhz machines (BX chipset, 32 bit PCI bus).
I did manage to get each card on it's own interrupt on the first try.

These aren't for the Beowulf here though, they're for other projects
which need higher bandwidth to a small number of machines.   (Including
GB ethernet networking testing).

> The Alteon AceNIC's are the most expensive Gigabit Ethernet cards by
> far, so we're buying some of the cheaper versions for evaluation.  For
> some unofficial gige NIC prices, see:
> 
> http://www.tdl.com/~netex/network/network.html

> Unfortunately, no one seems to have them in stock at the moment...

The GA620s were less than $300 each.  I called many sites and no one
seemed to have the GA620 (fiber) in stock.  Even sites with web pages
saying they had them.
 
The GA620t (copper) seemed to be more available (from looking at web
pages, didn't ask) and about the same price. Haven't tried it though...