On Thu, 2003-09-04 at 22:11, Tim Wilson wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I need to buy a new NIC and I noticed that the Intel Pro/100 NICs have 168-bit > 3DES coprocessors. Just out of curiosity, can Linux utilize that coprocessor > automatically, or does that have to be built into the driver? I could find very little mention of this online, but I was curious since I had seen a pile of cheap Intel boards with 3DES coprocessors on them at Tran Micro a week or two ago. I came across a mailing list message somewhere from Donald Becker, who said the processor mentioned didn't have any documentation available. The posting was made last summer, and I'm guessing things haven't changed since then. I thought that maybe the Linux driver made by Intel might support the 3DES bit, but there's hardly any mention of Linux at all in regard to their network adapters. As for Ethernet cards in general, I've always found myself running into 3Com cards (I have seen too many 3c905s and *way* too many 3c509s in my life). They've always seemed to work for me, though I never had to worry about the whole fiasco with 3c905a/b/c/d. However, I think the cards have a fairly tiny buffer on them (8 or 16kB, which must be divided between transmit and receive), but whether that is any better or worse than what else is on the market, I'm not sure.. I figure it would become a problem if the system was heavily loaded, but it probably work fine 99.9 percent of the time. As far as I know, most Ethernet cards work fine in Linux these days, except for a fair percentage of gigabit Ethernet cards (nVidia's onboard adapter being one prime exmple). -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ Are we live or on tape? / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20030904/e580d435/attachment.pgp