gigCard.txt Bikle ------------- This file describes my look at performance of gigabit ethernet (GE) cards. Also I look at 100 megabit cards and then do a simple comparison. I show output from ifconfig for the two hosts involved: bikle2# ifconfig -a lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 eri0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2 inet 10.1.2.65 netmask ffffff80 broadcast 10.1.2.127 ether 0:3:ba:9:15:ec ge0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 3 inet 10.10.10.12 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 10.255.255.255 ether 0:3:ba:9:15:ec bikle2# bikle3# ifconfig -a lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 eri0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2 inet 10.1.2.66 netmask ffffff80 broadcast 10.1.2.127 ether 0:3:ba:9:14:98 ge0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 3 inet 10.10.10.13 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 10.255.255.255 ether 0:3:ba:9:14:98 bikle3# I start by copying a large file from /tmp to /dev/null over the 100 megabit cards. I list below a summary of several transfers: 1176558400 bytes sent in 1e+02 seconds (11371.90 Kbytes/s) 1176558400 bytes sent in 1e+02 seconds (11388.68 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes sent in 1e+02 seconds (11384.35 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 1e+02 seconds (11346.41 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 1e+02 seconds (11355.27 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 1e+02 seconds (11322.75 Kbytes/s) Next I copied a large file from /tmp to /dev/null over the GE cards. 1170862400 bytes sent in 33 seconds (34414.89 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes sent in 34 seconds (34109.00 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes sent in 33 seconds (34233.40 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 32 seconds (36024.90 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 32 seconds (35907.31 Kbytes/s) 1170862400 bytes received in 32 seconds (36236.84 Kbytes/s) Based on the above numbers, I can say that the GE cards offer almost three times more bandwidth than the 100 megabit cards.