[MUD-Dev] TCP/UDP/IP Offload NIC for gamers?

[Jay Moran]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2004, Harlan Beverly wrote:

> Another advantage of TOE can be LATENCY (if designed propperly).
> A Latency advantage (even for an at-home Low Ping bastard on a
> DSL), is something worth paying for...

> The problem is Low Latency for TCP is easy to do with a TOE.  Low
> Latency for UDP, is very dependant on the implementation of the
> Layer-5 protocol over UDP.

> Thoughts on Low Latency?

Good point on the need for custom silicon vs. a generic CPU. Matter
of fact I think more than one of the Intel NICs use an i960
processor for the offloading of standard stuff. I'm so used to
dealing with OC-48/192 (and even an OC-768 in my lab) network
devices that I sometimes forget you don't always have to spin
silicon to achieve the needed speed.  :)

Anyway, latency really shouldn't be coming from the networking
stack, it should account for so little. Main thing the offloading is
going to buy you is less CPU time, so the CPU can spend time with
other activities. For a standard gamer's network traffic, that just
can't be taking that much time. Should be easy enough to profile
though.

As someone else commented, on ethernet networks I normally get
sub-millisecond pings... round trip even. So that would be the
stack, and the network latency.

Jay
--
http://tp.org/jay
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