CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ethernetcrccrc32
user3563894
user3563894

Reputation: 367

Why Ethernet is using CRC-32 and not CRC-32C?

It has being shown that CRC32C provides better results (an improve Hamming distance and a faster implementation) than CRC32. Why Ethernet is stil using the old CRC 32 and not CRC32C?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1326

Answers (1)

Mark Adler
Mark Adler

Reputation: 112492

"Faster implementation" is not true for the hardware that is normally used to implement the data link layer.

You may be referring to the fact that one particular processor architecture, x86-64, has a CRC instruction that uses the CRC-32C polynomial. However the ARM architecture (aarch64) CRC instruction uses the CRC-32 polynomial. Go figure.

One could argue that yet another polynomial should be used, since Koopman has characterized the performance of many polynomials with better performance than either of the ones you mention. But none of that really matters since ...

All of the legacy hardware has to support the original CRC, and there is little motivation to provide an alternate CRC would use would need to somehow be negotiated between the transmitter and receiver. There is not a noticeable performance advantage for typical noise sources, which are rare single bit errors.

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions