Abstract

3Com commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance of their PCMCIA LAN adapter. 

This Tolly Group Technology Spotlight presents benchmark results for the 3Com PCMCIA Ethernet 3C589 B as part of its 1994 Industry Benchmark for PCMCIA LAN performance. The report addresses the rapid growth of mobile LAN users and the need for objective data on notebook Ethernet adapters. Tolly’s broader study compared PCMCIA Ethernet and token-ring adapters against ISA-based baseline adapters in both Novell NetWare Open Data-link Interface (ODI) and IBM LAN Server Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) environments. For Ethernet, the results showed that mobile users could give up very little performance when moving from desktop PCs to notebooks. 

In the ODI test suite, the 3Com 3C589 B delivered strong performance across a range of frame sizes. At the maximum 1,512-byte frame size with packet burst disabled, the adapter was 8.65% faster than the ISA baseline. At 64-, 256-, 512-, and 1,024-byte frame sizes, throughput remained within roughly 13% to 20% of the baseline. With packet burst enabled at the 1,512-byte maximum frame size, performance came within 4.93% of the baseline. The Ethernet ODI chart on page 1 illustrates these relative results. 

Performance in the NDIS suite was even closer to the desktop reference. At the maximum 1,514-byte frame size with packet burst enabled, the 3C589 B operated within 1.82% of the baseline, and at the other tested frame sizes its throughput was within approximately 8% to 12% of baseline performance. The chart on page 2 summarizes these Ethernet NDIS comparisons. 

Tolly conducted the tests in one-to-one client/server environments over 10Mbit/s Ethernet using a Network General Expert Sniffer to capture traffic and a Hewlett-Packard Series J2300 Protocol Analyzer to verify frame sizes. The ODI suite used NetWare 3.12 and 3Com’s 3C589.COM ODI driver, while the NDIS suite used IBM OS/2 LAN Server Advanced 3.0 and 3Com’s ELPC3.DOS driver. The PCMCIA adapter supported BNC and 10Base-T media, and the page 3 diagram shows the Toshiba T1910CS notebook-based Ethernet test bed. Overall, the report positions the 3Com 3C589 B as a strong mobile Ethernet option whose throughput closely approached ISA desktop adapter performance.