SMC Etherpower II / EPIC/100 83C170

Illuminati Primus (vermont@gate.net)
Tue, 22 Apr 1997 11:43:32 -0400 (EDT)

Hi, I was just interested to know if anyone has had experience with the
SMC Etherpower II (AKA EPIC/100 83C170) adapters, and if they perform
reasonably decent/stable.. On Donald Becker's Fast Networking
technology page (http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/misc/100mbps.html), it
says:
...
A unique feature is the ability to transfer just the header of received
packets and wait for the driver to provide a buffer for the rest of the
data. This enables a secure U-Net style direct-to-user-address-space
receive routine.
...
I think I remember reading David Miller saying something about how
networking could be significantly sped up by minimizing the amount of data
that has to be copied around... How much work would it take to do that
with this card? Donald's driver is labeled as being in alpha phase, so it
probably doesnt have anything fancy like that implemented yet.. is anyone
planning to experiment with this? Or maybe this has been done already
somewhere else.. If so, please let me know :) It seems like it could
result in some really excellent throughput/latency numbers..

-vermont@gate.net