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TCP Equipped Ethernet Card

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-play-with dept.

Josh Baugher writes " A 100 megabit ethernet card with a TCP/IP stack built in. They claim to be able to do 9 megabytes/second with only 2% CPU load (compared to 4.5 megabytes/second at 98% receiving CPU load using Windows NT TCP/IP ( read about this on "geeks" mailing list.) "

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. security implications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    Heh, the sites been slashdotted, they should use their own cards or something... :)

    Moving the stack into hardware is an interesting idea, though. Unfortunately it has some negative (and admittedly positive) implications for those concerned about security.

    First, it will be impossible to tell what operating system a computer is running by using TCP fingerprinting. This is both good and bad in that it will thwart script kiddies to some extent by not revealing the platform, thus making it more difficult to take advantage of well known exploits. On the other hand things like Netcraft and the Internet OS counter will also not be able to take surveys properly.

    Second, and entirely negative, is the possibility that their hardware implmentation of TCP/IP may be sub-standard. It may have scads of DOS loopholes and other weaknesses. Unless they make the thing software upgradeable as holes are found, and make the software Open Source, I don't see it gaining much marketshare against the cheap and plentiful cards we have now.

  2. Is this new? by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 4

    I worked with an expensive Intel NIC 9 years ago that had an i960(I think) and an OSI protocol stack on board. Never did any benchmarks, but I'm guessing the complex OSI protocol stack plus wimpy ISA '386 boxes made putting intelligence on the NIC a good idea at the time.

    I figure there must be a good reason these things haven't gone mainstream in almost a decade. The proliferation of simple TCP/IP plus faster CPUs might be one reason.

    ... Ami.
    --
    It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
  3. Network benchmark needed by Breace · · Score: 5

    One thing is becoming obvious.

    We need some serious network benchmark tools that are cross-platform usable between Linux and Windows and maybe more.

    Strangely enough not too many seem to exist. Neither does someone seem to have some hard data on network performance. It entirely useless to say 'I get 1MB/s using FTP'.

    A good network benchmark tool will be able to test raw Ethernet performance as well as performance through protocol layers.

    Of course it would only test the network and not use the file system or hard drive. It should be very clear what sort of configuration is supposed to be used: two systems running full-duplex, one system using remote loopback or whatever. It could also be interesting to have a > 2 system test to show what collisions do.

    And most important as far as I'm concerned: Open Source. I don't believe in closed source benchmarks.

    The difference between raw Ethernet and TCP/IP protocol would show us how badly we need hardware assistance on what platform.

    Maybe we should try to port netperf ( www.netperf.org) to Windows and add raw Ethernet to it.

    Well, maybe I'll be a bit more serious about this if there's an interest.

    Breace.