choosing base addresses on NICs

[Gerry.Feldman at compaq.com (Feldman, Gerry)]

	I stand corrected on that but, as I said, we had an 8 port hub in my
office. Each port on the hub had 2 lights, the link light and the duplex
lighte. The duplex light was on for both of our duplex cards and yellow for
the half duplex cards. The link light showed green for 100baseT and yellow
for 10baseT. While it may have fit the technical definition of a switch, it
looked like a hub and was labeled as a hub. I don't remember the
manufacturer. I do know that Linksys does not support full duplex on their
hubs.

Jerry Feldman
Contractor, eInfrastructure Partner Engineering   
508-467-4315 http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/linux/

Compaq Computer Corp.
200 Forest Street MRO1-3/F1
Marlboro, Ma. 01752


> -----Original Message-----
> 	From:	bhorne [SMTP:bhorne.nouce at banet.net]
> 	Sent:	Wednesday, December 29, 1999 11:25 AM
> 	To:	Jerry Feldman
> 	Cc:	discuss at blu.org
> 	Subject:	Re: choosing base addresses on NICs
> 
> 	Jerry,
> 
> 	If it supported full-duplex, it was a switch.  A "hub" is a common
> channel device,
> 	where every input is echoed to every output - in other words, a
> resistive bridge
> 	with amplifiers and impedance matching as needed.  A card running
> full duplex into
> 	a hub would freeze the network.
> 
> 	An Ethernet "switch", OTOH, is actually a router using MAC-layer
> addressing.  It
> 	has buffers and intelligence adequate to the task of preventing
> collisions on the
> 	network, which speeds up Ethernet throughput dramatically:  since
> each station
> 	enjoys it's own buffer space and a separate transmit vs. receive
> path, they can
> 	leave their transmitters on and thus avoid the performance hit
> caused by RTS/CTS
> 	delays and packet collisions.
> 
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