Primary advantages of the shared RAM architecture:
· On-board logical link control (LLC)
· Low memory requirements for DOS environments
· Huge installed base of compatible applications and device drivers

Main disadvantage of the shared RAM architecture
   The main disadvantage of shared RAM architecture is that any data movement between the shared RAM area and system memory must be done under direct control of the system's CPU. This movement of data to and from the shared RAM must be done because applications cannot operate on data while it resides in the shared RAM area.  To compound matters, MOVE instructions from/to the shared RAM are much slower than the same MOVE instruction from/to the system memory because they occur across an I/O expansion bus.  This means that when shared RAM adapters are involved, the CPU spends a significant amount of time doing the primitive task of moving data from point A to point B. 

   On lightly loaded servers providing traditional productivity apps such as word-processing, spreadsheets, and print sharing, this is not really a problem.  But for applications such as databases or for more heavily loaded file servers, this can be a major source of performance degradation. 

Primary advantages of the bus master/DMA adapter:
· Able to transfer data directly to and from system memory without involving system processor. 
· High performance levels can be achieved in certain environments (OS/2 with LAPS or NTS/2 and Novell ODI), which cannot be obtained using the shared RAM architecture.

Primary disadvantages of the bus master/DMA adapters:
· High system memory consumption: In a DOS environment, the NDIS drivers for the 16/4 Adapter II may consume up to three times as much system memory as those used for the shared RAM adapters. Memory consumption is not so critical in the OS/2 environment, so it makes more sense to use these adapters in the OS/2 environment and avoid the DOS environment unless you are not memory constrained. The bus master/A adapter is not supported in a  DOS environment.

· Poor performance in certain DOS environments: In a DOS environment the 16/4 Adapter II and  LANStreamer are supported with NDIS and ODI drivers. Poor performance may occur in an NDIS environment when using LAN Support Program's DXME0MOD.SYS which is an 802.2 NDIS protocol driver. This driver must be used when running 802.2 applications such as PC/3270, AS/400 PC Support, DOS APPN, and TCP/IP V2.X for DOS when using the ASI (802.2) interface.

· No on-board logical link control (LLC): Since the adapter itself does not implement an LLC stack, one must be written into the NDIS MAC driver or protocol driver if one is needed. This means that additional system memory will be needed to implement the LLC stack. This is not much of a consideration in the OS/2 environment, but it may affect a memory constrained environment like that of DOS. Novell NetWare users will have to add a NetWare Loadable Module (NLM), LLC8022.NLM, for example, to add LLC support to the configurations of their server machines. The primary reason for doing so would be to enable the server adapter to be monitored as a critical resource from LAN Network Manager.

· Can't address >16 MB when bus master card only has 24 address lines:
     Bus master cards equipped with 24 address lines (such as the 16/4 Adapter II and LANStreamer MC16) cannot access memory over 16MB. Problems could occur in a machine with 24MB and a LAN application that resides in memory somewhere above the 16MB line. If you have more than 16MB of real memory in a machine, you should use an adapter with 32 address lines such as the LANStreamer MC32. The really ironic thing is that a shared RAM adapter with only 24 address lines has no trouble getting to memory above the 16 MB line simply because the shared RAM adapter relies on the system processor to move the data to and from the card. The bus master cards perform this data transfer themselves and must have the ability to address all of the memory within the machine. It may be possible to write adapter device drivers which will overcome this problem.

Lanstreamers
   LANStreamer adapters are based on the LANStreamer chip set, a token-ring implementation developed by IBM. This chip set provides performance approaching the theoretical maximum capabilities of 16Mbps token-ring, as well as several important new features. 

   32-Bit Bus Master Interface: The LANStreamers provide a 32-bit bus master interface to the Micro Channel supporting both 32-bit addressing and 32-bit data moves. LAN Streamer's bus mastering capabilities free the system CPU from having to move data between the LAN adapter and system memory, freeing the system CPU for other work and resulting in significantly lower system CPU utilization than shared RAM adapters.
    As the amount of data kept on servers has increased, the size of the file cache needed on the server has also increased. LANStreamers with 32-bit addressing are able to directly address 4 GB of system memory and are better suited to support these servers as well as other applications which have hefty system memory requirements.
   LANStreamer adapters are capable of moving data across the Micro Channel over four times as fast as competitive 16-bit bus master adapters. This high transfer rate is achieved through two improvements: doubling the amount of data moved with each data transfer from 16 bits to 32 bits, and the streaming data mode available on many new PS/2s (including the PS/2 M95-0Mx) halves the time for each data transfer from 200 ns to 100 ns. 
   The throughput for the LANStreamer MC32 is quite high relative to its predecessors, especially for small frames.  This is extremely important in client/server environments where research has shown that the vast majority of frames on the network are less than 128 bytes. 
   The combination of these factors allows LANStreamer MC32 to achieve peak burst transfer rates across the Micro Channel of 40 Mbps. LANStreamer's high Micro Channel transfer rates allow it to minimize its utilization of the Micro Channel, leaving bus capacity for other adapters and applications.
   The LANStreamer Micro Channel interface also supports parity checking for both data and address. This feature provides added robustness for mission critical applications.
   A consequence of the high LANStreamer throughput is higher CPU utilization.  This can happen because the LANStreamer can pass significantly more data to the server than earlier adapters.  This means more frames per second must be processed by the server network operating system. Higher throughput is the desired effect but what this also means is that the bottleneck sometimes moves quickly to the CPU when servers are upgraded to incorporate LANStreamer technology. 
   Of course, other components can emerge as the bottleneck as throughput increases.  The wire (network bandwidth) itself can become a bottleneck if throughput requirements overwhelm the ability of the network technology being used.  For example, if an application requires 3 MBps of throughput, then a token-ring at 16 Mbps will not perform the task.  In this case a different network technology must be employed. 

Pipelined Frame Processing: LANStreamer achieves superior  performance by changing how token-ring adapters transmit and receive frames.
   Traditional token-ring adapters all use variations of a store-and-forward architecture, where frames are moved into buffers in the adapter memory and processed by the adapter before being moved to their final destination. The processing that must be done includes managing the adapter's interface with the device driver, handling hardware and software interrupts, managing adapter buffers, checking frame status, managing the protocol handler, and moving frames in or out of buffer memory. MAC (Media Access Control) frame processing is also performed by the adapter processor.

   In contrast, LANStreamer uses a pipelined architecture. Frames are streamed directly between the token-ring and attaching system memory without being stored on the adapter and without any adapter processor intervention. Rather than first moving frames from system memory to the adapter, and then moving them from the adapter to the ring, LANStreamer simultaneously moves the frame from the system onto the adapter and out onto the ring. This new architecture is made possible by the implementation in VLSI of the functions previously done in software by the adapter processor. This dramatically improves performance, because the processing time required for each frame is the major bottleneck in the store-and-forward architecture.
   To transmit a frame, the attaching system adds a control block to its transmit queue. The adapter bus master interface reads this control block into special hardware registers, and begins moving the frame from the system to the token-ring. There is a small FIFO (first-in-first-out) buffer on the adapter to guarantee that there is always data available to move onto the ring (in case the adapter loses the Micro Channel temporarily). Data is moved into this FIFO from system memory, and simultaneously moved from the FIFO onto the token-ring. The process for receiving frames is similar. The adapter hardware sorts out MAC frames and they are processed on the adapter by the adapter processor. This processing does not affect the throughput performance of user information frames, which are passed directly to the system with no processor intervention.

Store and Forward vs Pipeline Architecture

 
 

   The result of the pipelined approach is that the adapter is never the bottleneck for throughput. If the system can handle it, LANStreamer can transfer or receive frames at 16 Mbps, even at small frame sizes. This means LANStreamer is capable of up to 48,000 frames per second throughput. By comparison, the bus master adapter has a throughput capacity approaching 3,000 frames per second. In a server such as the PS/2 Model 95-0MF, with a fast 50 MHz 80486 processor, a high bandwidth Micro Channel bus, and a LANStreamer token-ring adapter, each critical server component is optimized to provide high LAN I/O throughput capacity.
   Another result of the pipelined architecture is the minimization of adapter latency. Adapter transmit latency is defined as the interval from when the adapter is informed of a frame to transmit to when the first bit of the frame is placed on the ring. Adapter receive latency is defined as the interval from when the last bit of the frame is copied from the ring into the adapter to when the last bit of the frame is in system memory and the system is informed of the frame.
   Since there is no time spent on processing, and the frame is moved out of the adapter at the same time as it is moved in, LANStreamer adapter latency approaches the theoretical minimum possible. In a traditional adapter, the latency due to adapter processing is compounded by the storing of the frame in adapter memory. This makes the adapter latency increase as frame size increases (since it takes longer to move the whole frame in and out of adapter memory). In contrast, LANStreamer latency is essentially constant (less than 30 microseconds), regardless of frame size. By comparison, the latency to just store and forward a 4096-byte frame onto a 16 Mbps ring, without considering any processor overhead, is 2048 microseconds.

Multiple Group Addressing: Group addressing is part of the token-ring architecture, but today's token-ring adapters only implement one group address, which is not very useful for most applications. By implementing multiple group addressing, LANStreamer offers complete hardware support for multicasting. Multicasting can be thought of as a limited broadcast. Rather than sending a frame to either a single destination station or broadcasting it to every station on the network, multicasting allows a user to send frames to a limited group of destinations. Stations may assign themselves to a particular group by setting one of the 256 hardware group addresses available on LANStreamer. These 256 addresses allow each LANStreamer station to belong to up to 256 groups, but there can be more than 256 groups on a network.
   Examples of applications which would use multiple group addressing include protocols and applications where large amounts of data are distributed to users. For example, TCP/IP uses ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) frames for discovering routes. Rather than burdening every station with receiving and discarding these frames, group addresses could be utilized/ so that only stations using the TCP/IP protocol used these frames. Another example might be a stock market application. Brokers might want to belong to groups which received information on specific stocks of interest, rather than receiving everything and having to sort through it. A third example is software distribution. Users owning a specific application would have an associated group address. Updates to that application could be automatically sent to the group.

   Today's implementation can be described as follows: frames are sent to every station on the network using broadcast. Each station's CPU sorts each frame using the functional address, and discards frames not intended for it. There are obvious disadvantages to this approach. Each station's CPU must sort every broadcast frame (whether it is intended for the local station or not) tying it up for significant amounts of time. In one case, where TCP/IP was being used on the network, users reported that even stations that did not use TCP/IP were spending 40%-50% of their CPU cycles decoding ARP frames.
   Multiple group addressing has significant advantages over today's implementation. Frames are sorted in hardware by the adapter, so the station only sees frames that are meant for it. Functional addresses are token-ring only, while group addressing is designed in all major LAN topologies and is the multimedia standard. It is important to note that token-ring adapters without group addressing can coexist on the ring with LANStreamer adapters using the multiple group addressing feature; the current adapters won't be able to take advantage of this feature.

Priority Mechanisms: The LANStreamer chip set provides two mechanisms for prioritizing frames passing through the token-ring adapter. These are priority queueing in the adapter, and priority tokens on the ring. LANStreamer implements two prioritized transmit queues. High priority frames can be placed on the higher priority queue to be processed ahead of lower priority frames. The LANStreamer adapter will reserve priority tokens on the ring for these high priority frames.
   The ability to prioritize traffic is valuable for applications which have high bandwidth requirements or need to minimize response time. In today's token-ring adapters, frames are handled on a first-come first-served basis. A high priority frame must wait in line behind lower priority frames before being transmitted. Applications such as multimedia will benefit from LANStreamer's priority mechanisms by being able to both guarantee bandwidth on the ring through priority token reservation, and minimize delays by using the priority queue.

   Both these priority mechanisms transparently coexist with current token-ring implementations. The priority token is part of the token-ring architecture, and is already used in certain applications such as bridging. With LANStreamer, IBM has provided a mechanism, in conjunction with the priority queue, for making priority token reservation available to user applications. The priority queue is a system interface implementation that does not affect token-ring operation.

On-Card STP and UTP Support: The LANStreamer adapters include on-card filters for both STP and UTP media. LANStreamer MC 32 includes RIPL support for both LAN Server (all levels) and NetWare (V3.X and beyond). LANStreamer provides full network management support, and is fully compatible with LAN Network Manager. The LANStreamer MC 32 adapter is available for the 3172 Interconnect Controller.

Another advantage of this technology is that since adapter memory buffers are no longer required, the adapter is less expensive to produce. 

The LANStreamer technology is used in the IBM Auto LANStreamer Adapters for PCI and MCA as well as the EtherStreamer and Dual EtherStreamer MC 32 LAN adapters. 

EtherStreamer 

     The EtherStreamer LAN adapter supports duplex mode, which allows the adapter to transmit as well as receive at the same time.  This provides an effective throughput of 20 Mbps (10 Mbps on the receive channel and 10 Mbps on the transmit channel).  To implement this feature, an external switching unit is required. 

If more than one card is installed, packets can be switched both within cards and between cards.  The adapters utilize the Micro Channel to switch inter-card and can transfer data at the very high speed of 640 Mbps. 

The IBM Quad PeerMaster Adapter is a four-port Ethernet adapter that utilizes this technology.  It is a 32-bit Micro Channel bus master adapter capable of utilizing the 80 MBps data streaming mode across the bus either to/from system memory or peer-to-peer with another PeerMaster adapter. 

   The Quad PeerMaster is a type 5  Micro Channel adapter.  This refers to the physical size of the adapter.  A type 5 adapter is 13.1 x 4.825 inches and is larger than normal MCA adapters (11.5 x 3.475 inches).  It fits in specific servers and only in certain slots.  Servers that support the type 5 adapters include the Server 320, 500 and 520.  Refer to Server Products  for more information on these servers. 

It ships with 1 MB of memory.  Each port on an adapter serves a separate Ethernet segment. Up to six of these adapters can reside on a single server and up to 24 segments can be defined in a single server. 

This adapter can also be used to create virtual networks (VNETs). a single network, eliminating the need to implement the traditional router function either internal or external to the file server. 

The Ethernet Quad PeerMaster Adapter is particularly appropriate when there is a need for: 

      Switching/Bridging traffic among multiple Ethernet segments 
      Attaching more than eight Ethernet 10Base-T segments to the server 
      Attaching more than four Ethernet 10Base-2 segments to the server 
      Providing switching between 10Base-T and 10Base-2 segments 
      Conserving server slots 

 An add-on to NetFinity provides an advanced Ethernet subsystem management tool.  Parameters such as packets/second or total throughput can be monitored for each port, for traffic within an adapter, or for traffic between adapters. 

 By using NetFinity, you can graphically view the data, monitor for predefined thresholds, and optionally generate SNMP alerts.