>The 2300's internal bus just can't handle the modern web, it has a 33MHz
>interface with external data, so a bottleneck is quickly reached when 200KB/s
>of data comes flowing down the pike. There is nothing you can do to change
>this. It's just how it is with the 2300.
Actually, the memory and I/O bus speed and width (as well as NuBus's 10MHz)
are more than adequate to saturate a 10Mbps ethernet. So is that of a 386
with a 16-bit 8MHz ISA card, actually. The problem is more likely to be the
layers of software and hardware emulation that the 2300 has to go through
in order to reach the wire. If the bus in the 2300 and/or Dock were unable
to keep up with a measly 200KB/s, it wouldn't be very useful for SCSI, now,
would it? The math is really pretty simple. ;) It's true that the 2300
isn't a super fast network device, but as always, it would be good to get
the reasons right before stating them with such vigor and certainty.
For the original poster: there are a few things you can do to improve
matters. First, make the computer as fast as you can overall. Mostly this
means turning off certain extensions you don't need, or finding
alternatives that slow things down less. I always found Apple Guide to be a
real speed hog on the 2300, for instance. Replacing the built-in 68k
emulator with Speed Doubler will probably help matters too, since emulated
driver code is a big part of the problem here. Find yourself an
"evaluation" copy somewhere if you'd like to try it and see the results
first.
It's quite possible that the card they gave you isn't a great performer in
your PowerPC Duo, and even more likely that the driver software for it
isn't keeping up (and likely slowing down everyone else to boot). You might
see if you can try a more recent or just different ethernet card and
driver. Unfortunately NuBus ethernet cards aren't quite as common as they
used to be, but they're still out there. If your Dock has built-in ethernet
with an AAUI you could also buy or borrow a transceiver to try with that
(though note below that the built-in interface isn't really all that great
either, in my experience at least).
I used my old 2300 in a variety of network situations with a 10BaseT Newer
ethernet microdock as well as the built-in interface on a Dock II (both of
which are actually NuBus devices like your Farallon card), and found the
Newer dock consistently faster, often by 2-3 times; it still couldn't fill
the ethernet in either direction, but it was respectable (I found the max
to be about 700Kbps on an unshared (crossover) cable, which is a little
over half the real limit). Again, this is probably because they chose to
maintain the driver for it. The choice of card and driver will likely make
a huge difference.
Finally, try to measure with something a little less complicated and
generally ugly than IE or Netscape - try Fetch or Anarchie for a somewhat
better idea. Granted you probably want a cable modem largely for web
browsing, so check out the speed of each browser after performing the steps
above and see which one does best on your machine. Good luck.
--
Marc Sira | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can't play with words, what good are they?"
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