Free stuff (UK) again

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Mon Jul 12 09:28:50 2004

>>>>> "Fred" == Fred N van Kempen <waltje_at_pdp11.nl> writes:

 Fred> On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Tony Duell wrote:
>> > Does nobody use 10Mbps any more?
 Fred> Yes. I do.

 Fred> With classic systems, 100Mbps or up does not make any sense.
 Fred> And, in some cases, not even full duplex and/or switching makes
 Fred> sense; I have had several instances of a machine going nuts
 Fred> after being connected to a switch instead of a hub- protocol
 Fred> incompatibilities.

Good point; few old systems can go much over 10 Mb/s. (The better
VAXen, perhaps, and Alphas, of course, but certainly not a PDP11.)

Full duplex appeared in 10BaseT, but I wouldn't be surprised to see
devices that don't understand it. Switches, on the other hand -- it
seems VERY strange for that to break things. They have been around
since the dawn of Ethernet, and they are basically invisible.

The only issue I can think of is that switches can easily send back to
back packets, and some misdesigned NICs (the 3C501 comes to mind)
can't handle back to back packets. At one time we at DEC were asked
to implement a "don't send back to back packets" feature because of
this -- which we refused to do, vehemently...

     paul
Received on Mon Jul 12 2004 - 09:28:50 BST