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From: "Dennis" <dennis@mullan.com>
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Subject: RE: Network Card
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On Thu, 17 Apr 2003 jhoder@bu.edu wrote:

> i'm looking for some words of wisdom about pci ethernet adapters for 
> my freebsd system.  i'm running freebsd 4.7, an amd 750 duron on a msi

> k7t turbo mainboard.
>
> from what i've read so far, it seems like cards with dec 21040 chips 
> are preferred by at least some users, and the realtek (at least
> cheaper) ones are discouraged.  i've also noticed that prices seem to 
> vary greatly, and i'm trying to stay away from the $20 range of cards 
> in general.

The author of the 'Filtering Bridge' article at
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/filtering-bridges/fi
ltering-bridges-how.html states, "Moreover, to have a good throughput,
the cards should be PCI bus mastering cards. The best choices are still
the Intel EtherExpress Pro, followed by the 3Com 3c9xx series." Why
those might be superior to other bus mastering NICs is not explained in
the article.

D