Re: advice for heavy traffic capturing

["Loris Degioanni" <loris () netgroup-serv polito it>]

Hi,


> In some email I received from Loris Degioanni, sie wrote:
> > Other things:
> > - modern network cards don't almost do buffering. The memory inside the
> > board is usually few KB, and its purpose is providing the space for a
packet
> > or two. The actual buffering is done in the RAM of the PC. What
determines
> > the card performance is PHY efficiency and PCI bandwidth usage.
>
> Ok, so what do you have to say about NICs that have 128k buffers vs the
> small buffers on other cards?

I don't have anything specific to say about them, since I've never used one.
I've worked with Intel cards: both Fast and Gigabit Ethernet ones have
descriptors and packet buffers in the RAM. The only reason why big buffers
inside the card can be useful is better PCI bus usage. But my experience is
that PCI limits are almost reached with 4-8K transfers.

Loris

-
This is the tcpdump-workers list.
Visit https://lists.sandelman.ca/ to unsubscribe.