Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2018 16:33:07 -0500 From: John Lyon <johnllyon@gmail.com> To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommendations for cheap PCI-E network adapter ? Message-ID: <CAKfTJoWLPvC28=kPWE5oJYW87p%2BqbjB6zKwSpzfOoTjK1wBTWw@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <14197.1514925499@segfault.tristatelogic.com> References: <14197.1514925499@segfault.tristatelogic.com>
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Work and work well are two very different things. :-) What's your use case? If this is for a home box, developer box, or something that is not "enterprise production," then I wouldn't worry about RealTek cards bought in the last 5 years. Their 10/100 cards from 15 years ago were crap, which is how they earned their bad reputation. However, the continuing dismissiveness towards RealTek is mostly undeserved in my opinion. The issue currently is the state of the drivers themselves and not the cards. For example, the drivers themselves that FreeBSD includes have problems. However, you can always download the source code to the latest FreeBSD drivers from the RealTek website and all of the "bugs" disappear. For example, using the included FreeBSD drivers on my firewall/router (which uses RealTek NICS), I would get mysterious watchdog timeouts in my system logs and eventual disconnects from the WAN. The only way to reconnect was to reboot. The disconnect would occure every few days to a week when processing more than ~200 Mb of sustained traffic. After downloading, compiling, and installing the latest drivers available on the RealTek website, my problems disappeared. I can now route at sustained gigabit speeds. But this is true of any piece of hardware - you use old or bad drivers and you get bad results. You use newer drivers with the bugs worked out, you get better performance. A large part of the reason why Intel NICS are so beloved and perform so admirably is that the quality of their drivers is much higher. That said, if you're cost sensitive, buy your NICS used. There are lots of suppliers that take decommissioned servers and sell them for parts. The NICS might not be new, they might not even be manufactured anymore, but they are perfectly serviceable. Last time I checked, the going rate for used Intel NICS was something like $10 per port + shipping. I think used Broadcom NICS were similar in pricing. Both have good driver support for both FreeBSD and Linux out of the box, so you don't have to worry about the hassle of downloading, compiling, and installing newer drivers from source. -------------------------------- John L. Lyon PGP Key Available At: https://www.dropbox.com/s/skmedtscs0tgex7/02150BFE.asc On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 3:38 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote: > > I need to buy a PCI-E ethernet card. It won't really matter if it > is 10/100/1000 or just 10/100 but it has to work with FreeBSD at a > minimum. It would be Nice if it was also supported by Linux and > Windoze7, but that isn't really critical. > > I'm a serious cheapskate, so I'd like to spend as little as possible. > I don't need anything super-deluxe. Whatever is cheapest will be fine, > even if the performance is only so-so. > > Recommendations would be appreciated. > > > P.S. The small amount of research I just now did suggests that Realtek > based cards should be avoided, but one reviewer said that the Rosewill > RC-411v3 works just fine on Ubuntu, so I'm not sure what to think about > Realtek-based cards now. The price is right (for me) on the Rosewill > RC-411v3, but various online threads (relating to Realtek chips) give > me pause... > > https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/60033/ > > https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/55861/ > > I really can't see blowing fifty bucks on a simple, low-end ethernet card, > but everything inexpensive seems to be Realtek-based. :-( > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-net@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-net-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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