On 26 Oct 99, at 16:14, Changhsu P. Liu wrote:

> I have a cable modem connection recently, and I use a barebone hub (5-port,
> $30) to connect between a PC and a Mac. Ethernet cards on both machine are
> just 10-baseT (not 10/100mb cards). When copying files between 2 machines,
> it can only copy files at around 550k/sec.
>
> Is it a little too slow for my setup? I heard from my colleage that his
> file transfer speed between 2 PCs is over 1MB/sec.

  1MB/sec is very close to the maximum capacity of 10Mbps equipment.
So three possibilities spring to mind:

1.  He may be using a cross-over cable to connect two PCs, allowing
the link to run "full duplex" without any collisions; this leaves
nowhere to connect a third device (your cable modem).

2.  He may be using a switch (instead of a hub), allowing the most
traffic to run "full duplex" without any collisions; this is a bit
more expensive than a hub.

3.  He may be using 100Mbps gear.

> Does the quality of hub affect speed?

  Probably not much.  A poor hub *can* cause a lot of retransmissions
due to errors, but that shouldn't happen much.

> Since my cable modem connection is also connected thru the hub,
> will a better hub increase my connection speed?

  Probably not.  Many cable-modem providers throttle uploads to
128KB/s or 256KB/s, so your existing 550KB/s is already better than
that.

> For cable modem connection, should I go for 10/100mb ethernet
> cards? or 10-baseT has big enough bandwidth for cable??

  See above -- 10 Mbps should be plenty.  (The numbers don't compare
directly, but a T1 is only 1.5Mbps....)

> I read in another thread that PCI cards dramatically increases
> data transfer speeds and performance. Does anyone has a number
> to support this. I also read it somewhere that ISA cards would use
> more system resource than PCI. So, maybe I should buy a cheap PCI
> card for my PCs!?

  ISA, at 16 bits wide and 8 MHz, has kind of a theoretical maximum
bandwidth of 128Mbps -- in practice, it's probably more like a
quarter of that.  This is why you won't find any 100Mbps cards for
ISA.  PCI is twice as wide and four times as fast.


> What manufacturers do you guys recommend?

  Most inexpensive LAN cards are built around chips from Realtek;
there's relatively little difference between brands.  I've been using
cards from D-Link and NDC's SOHOware brand, and these should be fine
for home use.
  [For business/professional use, I'd recommend the 3com 3C905 or
Intel Pro 10/100 adapters.]

David G

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