From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 15 08:51:55 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1031716A4CE; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:51:55 +0000 (GMT) Received: from szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (s142-179-111-232.bc.hsia.telus.net [142.179.111.232]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83A2F43D1D; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:51:52 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sandy@krvarr.bc.ca) Received: from szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (8.12.11/8.12.6) with ESMTP id i6F8pf59003524; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 01:51:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from sandy@localhost) by szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id i6F8pf1H003521; Thu, 15 Jul 2004 01:51:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sandy) From: Sandy Rutherford MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <16630.17821.566176.885024@szamoca.krvarr.bc.ca> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 01:51:41 -0700 To: "Rob" In-Reply-To: <008a01c46a3c$b5737040$a4b826cb@goo> References: <008a01c46a3c$b5737040$a4b826cb@goo> X-Mailer: VM 7.07 under Emacs 21.3.1 cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Quad ethernet: Adaptec or Znyx? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:51:55 -0000 On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 you wrote: > Fellow BSDers, > I'm looking at 2 quad ethernet cards on eBay: Adaptec ANA-6944TX and Znyx > ZX346. > The Adaptec appears to use a DEC chipset. The Znyx card is supported by > de(4) and also supplies its own FreeBSD drivers up to version 4.4. > Has anyone had good or bad experiences with either of these cards? I am using a Znyx348 under FreeBSD 4.10. The 348 is a dual channel card, which is simply a de-populated 346, so performance should be identical. I had problems with it when using the de(4) driver. Nway support appears to break with this driver. I could get it to mostly work by forcing the media select in ifconfig. However, even by doing this I had very high packet loss rates when talking to one of my switches. I am not sure if a further workaround would have fixed the problem, because at that point I switched to the Znyx znb driver. It works great with the znb driver --- Nway works and packet loss is 0, even when thrashing it with spray. By the way, you can conclude from this that although Znyx states that its driver is only supported up to 4.4, it does work with 4.10. I have used it under both 4.6 and 4.10. However, I am concerned that I may need to replace the card when I upgrade to FreeBSD 5.x, unless either the 5.x de(4) driver works better or Znyx releases a version of its driver for 5.x. This is something that you may want to be wary of. I would also be interested to hear from anybody using either the ZX346 or ZX348 under 5.x. I have had no experience with the Adaptec card. ...Sandy