AsantéFast 10/100 NuBus network card

[V.Yakob]

Hi, folks!

Recently I was lucky to get a network card with a 10/100 Mbps AsantéFast applink.
The card is new, as far as I can tell, the card, driver and additional software were sealed in packages and there is no trace that they tried to open it.

I installed it in Quadra 950 to check how the network works -- surprisingly fast when compared to the built-in network card that I use through the adapter.

But that's the question. If there is any way to check the bandwidth of the network so that real numbers are visible, not my feelings when copying even large files. Any ideas?
I usually use iperf for modern systems, but I don't know what might be needed on Mac OS 8.1.

I took a few photos to leave the information about the card here.

 

[PL212]

I have this card as well, and to be honest, can't really see a speed difference in either my 660av or 8100/110. But I've been meaning to do more scientific testing. I suspect using Netatalk and monitoring throughput on the linux side would be one solution.

You also have to decide how far you're willing to diverge from the experience most Mac users would have had in 1995. Would you install CopyDoubler? NetDoubler? Would you push the OS all the way to something a bit anachronistic (as in too new) to get the benefits of a modern network stack?

For me, Quadra and early PPC computing is mostly about AFP, and it seems a lot of parts of that particular code path are not optimized for 100Mbps...

 

[V.Yakob]

That's why I want to do a test and see the numbers. Sometimes our own feelings are deceptive, there is a risk of placebo.
Previously, I conducted tests with Quadra 950 when I connected BlueSCSI to the NuBus SCSI card, I got ~8.5 MB/s for reading and ~7 MB/s for writing, so on a 100 Mbps card you can probably get about similar results or not much less.
Maybe I'll start with Fetch, because it shows the data transfer speed, I'll try to send and download a 100 Mb file using the built-in network card, then Asante.
The second step is to do the same in Power Macintosh 8100.

 

[Fizzbinn]

Newer Tech included a network/speed testing utility with their drivers that might be of interest. "Performance" v1.3 is included with the Newer Tech EtherTech 1.5 installer (https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ethertech-15-driver). It's vaguely iperf like.

I did some 10Mbps vs. 100Mbps Ethenet PCI card performance testing using it a while back.