3Com 3C359 TokenLink Velocity XL PCI 4-16 Mbps

The 3Com 3C359B TokenLink Velocity XL PCI network interface card (NIC) is a high-performance token ring network adapter for personal computers (PCs) equipped with the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus.

The 3C359B NIC provides a high-performance 32-bit PCI local bus interface with bus mastering that runs at a clock speed of 33 MHz.

Figure 1 TokenLink Velocity XL PCI 3C359B NIC

High-Performance Features of the 3C359B NIC

The 3C359B NIC delivers the token ring industry's highest performance for the lowest cost, and is designed to provide years of trouble-free operation. This section describes the NIC's high-performance features.

Parallel Tasking II Performance

The 3C359B NIC's design incorporates new Parallel Tasking II performance, which takes advantage of the latest developments in PCI bus design to deliver the fastest data throughput and lowest CPU utilization of any token ring NIC.

Parallel Tasking II performance is built upon a solid foundation of proven Parallel Tasking architecture, which introduced data pipelining and overlapping task processing to improve throughput and achieve the industry's fastest data transmission and reception speeds.

DynamicAccess Class of Service

The 3Com DynamicAccess software adds intelligence to the 3C359B NIC for optimized performance and control. With DynamicAccess Class of Service (Traffic Prioritization), you can select time-critical applications that require the highest-priority access to your network-such as multimedia sessions. Based on your selection, the network device driver recognizes high-priority applications, prioritizes their data transmissions, and accelerates their data transmissions in the following ways:

 

• The NIC implements dual queues, allowing high-priority traffic to be queued for transmission before normal-priority traffic.

   

• High-priority traffic is allowed to request and use high-priority tokens (as specified in the IEEE 802.5 standard). This tends to reduce the latency experienced in acquiring a suitable token for transmission onto the network.

   Class of Service (Traffic Prioritization) is available only with the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) 5.0 and NDIS 4.0 miniport drivers supporting the following operating systems: Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 98.

Support for Full-Duplex/Dedicated Token Ring

Full-duplex/Dedicated Token Ring (DTR) is an enhancement to the IEEE 802.5 standard that allows a token ring switch port to be dedicated to a station.

In full-duplex mode, a station can simultaneously transmit and receive independent data streams for potential data throughput of 32 Mbps. The 3C359B NIC can operate in full-duplex mode when attached to a DTR switch.

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