From owner-freebsd-isp Mon Jun 9 15:54:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA19295 for isp-outgoing; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 15:54:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from december.real.net.au (root@december.real.net.au [203.25.56.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA19277 for ; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 15:53:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pyromaniac (www.kemenys.com.au [203.17.240.90]) by december.real.net.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA31657 for ; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 08:53:40 +1000 Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970610085340.00ae7a80@pop.real.net.au> X-Sender: richard@pop.real.net.au X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 08:53:40 +1000 To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG From: Richard Laxton Subject: Intel EtherExpress vs DEC PCI chipsets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi, I am building a quad ethernet router with FreeBSD at this moment. It is going to be doing a lot of filtering and IP accounting but nothing else. At the moment I am considering the following: ASUS P55T2P4/C Motherboard Intel Pentium 200 CPU IDE HDD (ST52520A) Generic ISA video 32Mb or 64Mb of RAM 4 x 10/100 Mb Ethernet cards Now there are a few things that I would like some help with. Firstly with a machine that is performing only routing tasks (RIP routing protiocols only) with a *total* of maybe 10-15Mbits/sec across all ports, is there any advantage to getting 64Mb of RAM vs 32Mb? My thought would be to go 64Mb but accounts departmet always ask... Secondly, Do I use Intel EtherExpress 100B TX cards or the DEC 240xx type cards? Does either have a CPU advantage? Are there any stability issues with either card? What are people's experiences? I have seen conflicting reports from this list ranging from "don't get the intel" to ftp.cdrom.com uses the intel (so it must be good). Thanks in advance for any help you can give. Richard.