On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 18:28:13 -0500, Jesse Guardiani <jesse at wingnet dot net> wrote:
> 
> So are you saying that the Soekris 4501 won't even route 100Mb speeds?
> Or does the 4501 only have 10BaseT ports?

They're 10/100 ports.  Won't even get close to 100 Mb, though they
fared better in Manuel's testing at 16-18 Mb.  You bring up an
interesting point though, with the really quite strange setup I was
using to test, I have to wonder if one of the cards incorrected
autonegotiated at 10 Mb.  Regardless, you aren't even going to come
close to 100 Mb.

One, we're talking a 486 133 MHz, and two, they're low cost, low power
NIC's.  Interesting related thread on the Soekris list here. 
http://lists.forko.com/pipermail/soekris-tech/2004-August/thread.html#6546

Interrupt time takes a good portion of the CPU cycles, because the
network chipset in Soekris gear (ditto for WRAP) is too "dumb" to do
much itself - it has to pester the CPU for most every little thing.

Kind of like the Intel Pro/1000 desktop adapters I tested recently. 
Get about 450-475 Mbps on iperf before the CPU gets maxed out (low end
P4's) because so much is done by the CPU rather than on the card,
which you'll find the latter on the much more expensive gig cards. 
($30 USD vs. 10-30 times that much for really good gig cards)  In that
case, about 40% of the CPU time was interrupts, and around 60% of it
in the kernel.

Not to bash on Intel though, in general, their NIC's are some of the
most reliable and fastest on FreeBSD (and hence m0n0wall), and don't
beat your box to death with interrupts (at 100 Mb) like sis and
realtek.

-Chris