Very Computer

Sarah Green

   Has anyone successfully used the Etherwave cards under Linux?  If so, any
   opinions on Etherwave versus other network cards?  Thanks in advance.

No reason why they shouldn't work.  They're just a 3c509 in disguise.
Farallon has changed the outboard transceiver interface, but from the
software's point of view, it's still a 3c509.

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: The Etherwave network card is reportedly a OEMed 3c509 chip combined with
: a Farallon transceiver.  The standard 3c509 driver should work with it.

: Opinions?  They are too expensive for general use, but are a great option
: for special cases.  Hublet prices start at $125, and Etherwave adds $75-$100
: to the price of the board -- worth it if you have pulled one wire
: too few, but not if you are two network drops short.

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Warning I'm a Farallon employee.
That said, there are a few other advantages that an Etherwave card has
over regular 10bT cards plus hublet configuration.  Potentially the most
important advantage is that unlike a hub of any kind(including hublets),
Etherwave cards do not increase a packets hop count. We've seen a number
of sites where a hublet is just not an option because a given Ethernet
packet is already going through too many repeaters(e.g. hubs, routers, or
bridges).  The addition of a hublet in such situations would make it
impossible for packets to reach certain destinations.  Since Etherwave
cards aren't repeaters, they do not have that limitation.

You are correct in stating that our Etherwave ISA card is based on the
3C509 chipset and is therefore identical to a 3C509 from the computers
point of view.   However, we do have a number of of products in the
Etherwave line including:
Etherwave PCMCIA-based on 3Coms PCMCIA Ethernet card
Etherwave AUI-Adds Etherwave capability to any Ethernet card with an AUI..
Etherwave AAUI-Same as above for AAUI devices.
as well as a number of different Etherwave products for Macintoshes.

-Tupshin
-Farallon Tech. Support

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