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Conference 7.286::fddi

Title:FDDI - The Next Generation
Moderator:NETCAD::STEFANI
Created:Thu Apr 27 1989
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2259
Total number of notes:8590

1765.0. "how to enable FDX" by TPOV07::TONYCHENG () Wed Aug 02 1995 09:34


    Does anyone know how to enable full-duplex function for DEMFA controller
    that under VMS 5.5-2 and without snmp function ?

    our configuration is shown below :



                  +-------------------------------+
                  |           GIGASWITCH          |
                  +-------------------------------+
                     |    |    |     |    |    | 
                     |    |    |     |    |    |  FGL-4 CONTROLLER
                     |    |    |     |    |    | 
                     
                      VAX 7610 * 4 , VAX 6420 * 2 

                       OS   = VMS 5.5-2
                       FDDI = DEMFA ,  FW = V2.0
                       UCX  = N/A
                       
     Regards
     Tony Cheng  
                     
                
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1765.1STAR::STOCKDALEThu Aug 03 1995 14:4110
As far as I know, there is nothing the VMS driver has to do.  All that is
needed is to have V2.0 of the firmware in the DEMFA and connect it a port
that supports full duplex.

Not that there is any good reason to use full duplex on a DEMFA, unless you
can get excited over a 10 to 15 mbit improvement.  (The best I ever saw was
around 110-115 mbits/sec - its hard to tell the DEMFA is running full-duplex
since the difference is so small).

- Dick
1765.2STRWRS::KOCH_PIt never hurts to ask...Thu Aug 03 1995 15:224
    
    I agree with .1, but even though it doesn't really increase thruput,
    wouldn't it have an effect on latency given you could be doing
    simultaneous xfer & rcv?
1765.3STAR::STOCKDALEFri Aug 04 1995 17:285
Right, there should be some difference there, although on a VAX I doubt
the difference would be measurable (not enough computes and the driver
implementation is less than optimal).

- Dick
1765.4TPOV07::TONYCHENGTue Aug 08 1995 06:257
    
    I got trouble because i told my customer, our FDX function should boost
    FDDI throughput. Do we have the DEMFA performance analysis report ?
    Where can find it ?
    
    Regards
    Tony Cheng   
1765.5STRWRS::KOCH_PIt never hurts to ask...Tue Aug 08 1995 09:193
    
    The question is, was this testing only done with a VAX 6600? Was it
    rerun using an Alpha system? Or is it a limitation of the controller?
1765.6STAR::STOCKDALETue Aug 08 1995 19:341
Its a DEMFA hardware limitation.
1765.7STEVMS::PETTENGILLmulpMon Aug 21 1995 22:1117
>    I got trouble because i told my customer, our FDX function should boost
>    FDDI throughput. Do we have the DEMFA performance analysis report ?
>    Where can find it ?

"boost FDDI throughput" relative to what?

We measured an increased thruput over not-FDX when sending/receiving a high
percentage of back-to-back 4500 byte packets.  The only way to accomplish this
is with MSCP server traffic to a lot of disks.  Under these circumstances its
possible to move from the FDDI and/or GIGAswitch backplane limit of 97-98
megabits up to the DEMFA DMA limit of 115-120 megabits.  The DEMFA was designed
a long time ago before full duplex was considered so it provided 10-20% added
bandwidth to ensure that it wasn't the bottleneck.

We also did some testing to see if we could demonstrate reduced latency, but
I don't believe that we came up with anything convincing.  Its difficult to
do this was VAX systems since the clock resolution is so course (10ms).