Daniel <daniel (AT) presscom (DOT) netwrote:
Can anyone recommend a good multi-port NIC card e.g. 4-port, that
works
K on BSD with a good source supplier.
This question was debated a few times in the archive already. So, far
there isn't one great card that works very well that still available
to
purchase new these days. SK based were best, but not available
anymore.
Intel have the Pro 1000MT, but you need to run the bsd.mp to not get
overwhelm by interrupts even on a single processor server. That card
works, but not as well as it should really! I would just K with
bsd.mp,
but not under very heavy load, but will do what you want for lower
demanding setup as long as you D run the bsd.mp kernel.
So, far I haven't found one that is still available to purchase new
these days and will provide the same efficiency as older cards were
able
to do! (:< Very sad but true!
I sure hope this change soon, but that's where we are now, at a
minimum,
that's where I am anyway.
Daniel
Just found this.
Might just buy one and try it out.
RegardsMartin

martin wrote:
Just found this.

Might just buy one and try it out.

May be good, but the bus is PCI only if I am not mistaken looking at the
spec. Not even PCI Express or PCI X, so it would be interesting to see,
but if you are concern about congestions with the Intel one, may be this
would be saturating the bus at 33MHz, or may be it might go at 66, but
sure not 100 or 133 however. I saw some others, but none that support
PCI Express as a minimum however. So, I discarded them.

That doesn't mean this is not a good one. (:I didn't test it, so I
can't talk knowing the results.

Daniel skrev:

May be good, but the bus is PCI only if I am not mistaken looking at the
spec. Not even PCI Express or PCI X, so it would be interesting to see,
but if you are concern about congestions with the Intel one, may be this
would be saturating the bus at 33MHz, or may be it might go at 66, but
sure not 100 or 133 however. I saw some others, but none that support
PCI Express as a minimum however. So, I discarded them.

i haven't tested any 4 port nic's whatsoever yet, and don't know much
about these things, but isn't the theoretical throughput of the 33 MHz
32-bit pci bus around ~1 Gbit/s? so, assuming the system is dedicated
to routing, why would a theoretical maximum of ~0.4 Gbit/s be so hard to
handle, especially as most of it should stay on the internal pci bus of
the nic?

kindly
kami petersen

33 Mhz * 32 bits = 1 056 000 000 bits per tick,
1 056 000 000 / 10^6 (1 megahertz = 10^6 ticks per second) =
1 056 megabits per second
1 056 / 8 = 132 megabytes per second

It should actually be 100/3 Mhz.

kami petersen wrote:
Daniel skrev:

>May be good, but the bus is PCI only if I am not mistaken looking at
>the spec. Not even PCI Express or PCI X, so it would be interesting to
>see, but if you are concern about congestions with the Intel one, may
>be this would be saturating the bus at 33MHz, or may be it might go at
>66, but sure not 100 or 133 however. I saw some others, but none that
>support PCI Express as a minimum however. So, I discarded them.

i haven't tested any 4 port nic's whatsoever yet, and don't know much
about these things, but isn't the theoretical throughput of the 33 MHz
32-bit pci bus around ~1 Gbit/s? so, assuming the system is dedicated
to routing, why would a theoretical maximum of ~0.4 Gbit/s be so hard to
handle, especially as most of it should stay on the internal pci bus of
the nic?

kindly
kami petersen