Networking Concepts Lesson 04 - Hardware - Eric Vanderburg

1. Chapter 4
Network Interface Cards &
Computer Hardware
Networking Concepts – Eric Vanderburg ©2005

2. Transmission Types
 Serial
– linear
 Parallel – many pieces at same
time
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

3. Bus








ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)
EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture)
MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) - Proprietary
VLB (VESA Local Bus) – Long ISA with extra connectors, hard to
adapt to new technology (Pentium), 1 or 2 cards supported
PCI (Peripheral Component Interface)
PCI-X (PCI Express)
PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International
Association)
AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)




Attached to Northbridge directly
Dedicated bandwidth, no sharing
Connected to memory, possible to share memory
Frame Buffer memory on card

VRAM (Video RAM) – Dual Ported, read & write
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

4. Bus
Bus Type
Bus Width
(bits)
Clock Speed Transfer Rate
(Mbps)
(MHz)
ISA
8-16
8
8-16
EISA
16-32
8
16-32
MCA
16-32
5-66
10-266
VLB
32
33
133
PCI
32-64
33-66
533
AGP
32-64
66
533-2048
PCI-X
32-64
66-533
2560-10480
PCMCIA
16-32
33
6-12
Networking Concepts – Eric
Transfer Rate = Bus Width * Clock Speed /8
Vanderburg ©2005

5. More about bus
 CPU
Bus
 FSB
(Front Side Bus) - Northbridge
 100, 133, 166, 200, 800, 1000MHz
 Clock Multiplier
 FSB
must be faster than I/O Bus or FSB
is bottleneck.
 Early
AGP
 Some PCI-X implimentations
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

6. External Technologies
 Serial
 Parallel
 USB
 1.0
– 12Mbps
 2.0 – 480Mbps
 Firewire
(IEEE 1394)
 400Mbps
 1394b
– 3200Mbps
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

7. Other Hardware
 CPU
 Hard
 Motherboard
 RAM
 Graphics
Card
 Sound Card
 Modem
Drive
 Optical Drive
 Backup Drive
 TV Tuner
 DVD Decoder
 Controller Card
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

8. Hard Drives

Types




IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics)
SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment)
ATA Types






ATA: Known also as IDE, supports one or two hard drives, a 16-bit interface
and PIO modes 0, 1 and 2.
ATA-2: Supports faster PIO modes (3 and 4) and multiword DMA modes (1
and 2). Also supports logical block addressing (LBA) and block transfers.
ATA-2 is marketed as Fast ATA and Enhanced IDE (EIDE).
ATA-3: Minor revision to ATA-2.
Ultra-ATA: Also called Ultra-DMA, ATA-33, and DMA-33, supports multiword
DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps.
ATA/66: A version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported
by Intel, that doubles ATA's throughput to 66 MBps.
ATA/100: An updated version of ATA/66 that increases data transfer rates to
100 MBps
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

9. Booting
 See
in class handout
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

10. Configuration
 IRQ
(Interrupt Request Line)
 I/O Port
 Memory Address
 DMA channel
 Driver
NDIS (Network Device Interface Specification),
allows use of multiple protocols
 WDM (Win32 Driver Model), Windows
 ODI (Open Datalink Interface) – Apple, Novell

Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

11. More Features
 Shared
Adapter Memory
 Shared System Memory (Shared Memory)

UMA (Unified Memory Architecture)
 Bus
Mastering - Take control of bus to transfer
data from RAM
 RAM Buffering - RAM for buffering of incoming
data
 On board processor
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

12. Optional NIC Features
 IPSec
chip & circuitry
 QOS
 WOL
(Wake On LAN)
 Promiscuous Mode
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

13. Graphics Card – Video Card
 Memory
 Computations
 Frame
for the GPU
Buffer
 Monochrome
text – 2k/frame
 1600x1200 32bit color – 6Mb/frame
 GPU
(Graphics Processing Unit)
 RAMDAC (Random Access Memory DigitalAnalog Converter)
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

14. Graphics Port Types

DB-15



MDA (Monochrome Display Adapter) 720x350
CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) 640x200
EGA (Enhanced Graphics Adapter) 640x480
SVGA (Super VGA) 800x600
XGA (Extended Graphics Array) 1024x768
VGA (Video Graphics Array) – General Term now for DB-15
DVI (Digital Video Interface)






DVI-D (Digital) – LCD or Plasma
DVI-A (Analog) – CRT or HDTV
DVI-I (Integrated Digital/Analog)
Data sent by TMDS (Transition Minimized Differential
Signaling)
Single-link – One TDMS, max res 1920 x 1280
Dual-link – Two TDMS
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

15. Bottleneck
 Any
system or network is only as fast as
it’s weakest component
 There will always be a bottleneck but
upgrades should be focused on the
bottleneck in order to improve
performance.
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

16. Tweaking
 Pagefile
 Overclocking
 Defragmentation
 Updates
 Drivers
 BIOS
 Processor
Scheduling
 Anti-Spyware
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005

17. Book corrections
 ISA
clock speed is 8MHz not 10MHz
(pg. 128)
Networking Concepts – Eric
Vanderburg ©2005