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Mixing Gigabit, Copper, and Linux
iampgray writes: "With copper-based gigabit cards selling for less than $36 these days, what kind of performance can you expect -- especially in the often-overlooked Linux market? We sought out to test exactly what you could expect from copper-based gigabit solutoins for the desktop interface through the cluster-targeted products. Name brands and off-brands were put through the wringer. How'd they fare? Interesting results to say the least."
Note: When connecting a Power Mac G4 computer directly to another computer without using an Ethernet hub, a crossover cable is not required; circuits in the PHY detect the type of connection and switch the signal configuration as required.
Are we even to the point when a normal PC could handle Gigabyte? And if so, why not use optical?
A 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus can support one (1) gigabit ethernet card at full capacity (card's bandwidth is about 100 Mbytes/sec, PCI 32/33 is 133 Mbytes/sec).
If you want to stick multiple cards in (e.g. for a small hypercube-style cluster), buy motherboards that support 64/33 or 64/66 (I was drooling over the dual-processor 64-bit-PCI AMD boards a little while back).
Gigabit ethernet over copper has the advantage of running over your existing cabling (i.e. cat-5 is fine). This avoids having to muck about with fiber, as fiber is a PITA to maintain yourself (getting optically perfect connections for the fiber jacks is picky).
The way gigabit ethernet is encoded on cat-5 cable is both sneaky and elegant.