I'd heard that 100Mbps Fast Ethernet was not the performance bump you'd think it was under classic Mac OS so I did some testing a while back to see what was what at least on a PCI Mac where 100Mbps Ethernet cards are not that hard to find.
I used an AppleShare network speed testing tool I stumbling across a while back (likely when getting a Duo Ethernet micro dock working). Its called "Performance" v1.3 which is included with the Newer Tech EtherTech 1.5 installer:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ethertech-15-driver
I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is some better classic Mac OS network benchmarking tool I don't know about but think this one is pretty simple/neat.
I ran tests between my 6500 from/to my Raspberry Pi 4 "retro home server" running MacIPRpi (1Gbps Ethernet) all connected via an Apple Airport Extreme 6th Generation's Gigabit capable Ethernet ports.
The driver I used ("Apple Enet" extension, v2.4.2) for the "Apple Fast Ethernet 10/100BaseT Card" didn't work under Mac OS 7.6. For the "AsanteFast 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter Rev. B" I used this driver from Macintosh Garden.
The hard drives I used for the different OS tests were different models which makes the tests not directly comparable but I was testing with what I had on hand and as much as it bothers me that I didn't take the time to get a disk configured with partitions for each OS and run the tests from there I think it does help illustrate the impact of drive performance on network data transfers.
My take aways:
Mac OS 7.6, and likely earlier versions, aren't really able to take advantage of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet. Not sure about 8/8.1 but by 8.5/8.6 it seems Apple made OS changes which allow the same hardware and driver (the Asante card/driver being the proof) to take advantage of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet.
In testing and real world you need to have source and destination disks able to sustain more than 10Mbps (1.25MBps) reads and writes to see any real benefit of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet. Also the "RAM to Server" tests might show some SD card storage bottlenecks on my Raspberry Pi server.
I used an AppleShare network speed testing tool I stumbling across a while back (likely when getting a Duo Ethernet micro dock working). Its called "Performance" v1.3 which is included with the Newer Tech EtherTech 1.5 installer:
https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ethertech-15-driver
I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is some better classic Mac OS network benchmarking tool I don't know about but think this one is pretty simple/neat.
I ran tests between my 6500 from/to my Raspberry Pi 4 "retro home server" running MacIPRpi (1Gbps Ethernet) all connected via an Apple Airport Extreme 6th Generation's Gigabit capable Ethernet ports.
The driver I used ("Apple Enet" extension, v2.4.2) for the "Apple Fast Ethernet 10/100BaseT Card" didn't work under Mac OS 7.6. For the "AsanteFast 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter Rev. B" I used this driver from Macintosh Garden.
The hard drives I used for the different OS tests were different models which makes the tests not directly comparable but I was testing with what I had on hand and as much as it bothers me that I didn't take the time to get a disk configured with partitions for each OS and run the tests from there I think it does help illustrate the impact of drive performance on network data transfers.
My take aways:
Mac OS 7.6, and likely earlier versions, aren't really able to take advantage of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet. Not sure about 8/8.1 but by 8.5/8.6 it seems Apple made OS changes which allow the same hardware and driver (the Asante card/driver being the proof) to take advantage of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet.
In testing and real world you need to have source and destination disks able to sustain more than 10Mbps (1.25MBps) reads and writes to see any real benefit of 100Mbps Fast Ethernet. Also the "RAM to Server" tests might show some SD card storage bottlenecks on my Raspberry Pi server.
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