Hackable GbE Controller?

Question

Hello,I was just wondering if there are any GbE controllers out there thatdo enough of their processing in the driver (or have sufficientcontrol knobs available) that we can experiment with nonstandardcollision algorithms, or in any case, as much of frame processing aspossible? The Intel controllers I've looked at (8254x) seem to handlemost of the actual Ethernet processing in hardware, as you'd expect,leaving the driver to do little more than manage buffers andstatistics. We'd like to play around at a lower level. Does anyonehave any suggestions? Maybe it's just too much to ask at these speeds?Thanks!PS The e-mail address is just a spam trap, so if possible please replyto the group.

jpd · Accepted Answer

I don't know whether the accton tigon I and II and broadcom tigon III cards will let you go quite that far, but I did notice they have replaceable firmware. The documentation and sample firmwares were available from accton but apparently not any more, but a little searching should turn up some copies.

Rick Jones · Answer

^^^^^^^^You mean Alteon?I presume this would be at 100BT speeds since there is so very littlehalf-duplex GbE...  I wonder what the folks who came-up with BLAM todeal with capature effect used for their testing?rick jones

jpd · Answer

Err, yes. Apologies.

Rich Seifert · Answer

We did it all in simulation; the project never got far enough to build actual hardware. If we were doing it today, I would build the state-machine in an FPGA for testing.

-- Rich Seifert Networks and Communications Consulting 21885 Bear Creek Way (408) 395-5700 Los Gatos, CA 95033 (408) 228-0803 FAX

Send replies to: usenet at richseifert dot com

Medgya · Answer

Many thanks for the feedback. I'll poke around and see what I can laymy hands on!

Hackable GbE Controller?

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