Network card - Transferspeed - Mediator

[Legerdemain]

Since I am in the midst of an upgrade I am pretty curious on the networkingcards being and not being when using it together with a Mediator.

Thing is, last time I upgraded and used a Realtek-compatible network card on my Mediator I did never manage to get speeds above 60kbbps...

A friend of mine told me that to use a network card on the Mediator one needs to have installed a gfx-card aswell (for buffering), but is this really such a limitation when it comes to the transfer speed that I can't get transfers above 60kbpps? Or is this information legid at all?

If this is the case it would almost be to prefer using a PCMCIA network card, then I can at least get transfers around 600kbps...

[ID4]

Hummm, When I get my amiga connected to my laptop via Ethernet PCI 10 mb, I get transfer throught FTP about 500 kb/s with Genesis, and about 300 Kb/s with Miami.

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[patrik]

@Legerdemain:

Must just first say that 60kiloBytes/sec(?) sounds awfully little. What applications did you measure that with? You should get quite a bit more, especially if you have a fast cpu.

Using a network card on the Mediator shouldnt be particulary slower/faster than other solutions not being able to DMA the contents of the network cards buffers to/from normal fastmem.

The Mediator solutions designed for the Amiga 1200 has some limitations. One of those limitations is that a PCI cards doesnt "see" the Amiga address space and hence it cannot transfer anything directly to lets say the fastmem. A PCI card can on the other hand "see" other PCI cards connected to the Mediator and thus a bus mastering network card can transfer its buffers to the memory of a graphics card on the Mediator. Still the buffers has to be copied from the graphics cards memory to the fastmem by the cpu so this solution is placed in the non DMA category. One thing to note though is that it should be a bit more efficient for the cpu to copy network data to/from graphic memory than copying it from the buffers of a PCMCIA network card in an A1200 or from the buffers of a ZorroII network card in an A3000/A4000.

The mediator for A3000/A4000 is according to the Elbox own information able to do DMA transfers to/from normal amiga-memory, so theoretically a network card fitted in such a Mediator system wouldnt need any buffers in graphic memory. Though I dont know if the drivers implement this feature. If this feature is implemented in the drivers this solution would be optimal as the cpu wouldnt have to be involved with the buffer transfers.. on the A3000/A4000 that is ofcourse.

Transferspeeds on the Amiga is though mostly hindered by the raw cpu work needed to be done inside the currently not so effective TCP/IP stacks.

The mediator solution might be slightly faster, but my recommendation is to go with the cheapest available solution as the performance difference will be minimal.


/Patrik

[lempkee]

with the realtek 10mbit card i get 400 -> 800 , depending on if i am on 66mhz or 50 and remeber UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD is diffrent.


as for pcmcia , i never got speeds over 200,300.

and i use Miami DX..

cheers

[patrik]

@lempkee:

Have you tried Genesis instead of Miami DX?

For PCMCIA cards my experience is that Miami is very slow compared to my trusty old AmiTCP... and as Genesis should be a newer AmiTCP it should perform atleast equally.


/Patrik

[Lemmink]

No GFX-card in your mediator ? What did you get the Mediator for in the first place ?

[Piru]

as for pcmcia , i never got speeds over 200,300.

and i use Miami DX..

Back when I used A1200 still, I got 819KB/sec with PCMCIA (cnet.device), using Genesis.

Genesis was 33% faster than Miami[DX].

[Legerdemain]

Lemmink wrote:
No GFX-card in your mediator ? What did you get the Mediator for in the first place ?

Hahaha... no, I made a typoo. What I meant was wether or not the need for a gfx-card was the reason that I got so slow transfers (in the way that when using a gfx-card to buffer it slows down the transfers). But this was obviously not the case.