From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 21 19:07:24 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE3AD1065670 for ; Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:07:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nvidican@m2.vidican.com) Received: from mail-iw0-f171.google.com (mail-iw0-f171.google.com [209.85.223.171]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8EC518FC20 for ; Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:07:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iwn1 with SMTP id 1so292135iwn.28 for ; Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:07:24 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: nvidican@m2.vidican.com Received: by 10.231.148.16 with SMTP id n16mr658761ibv.37.1264099520889; Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:45:20 -0800 (PST) X-Originating-IP: [136.2.1.101] In-Reply-To: <20100121112757.A11858@starfire.mn.org> References: <20100121112757.A11858@starfire.mn.org> Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:45:20 -0500 X-Google-Sender-Auth: 6e509689e4d54554 Message-ID: <795fc2b81001211045s1c5de08fr416adfc8206e7d47@mail.gmail.com> From: Nathan Vidican To: John Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommendations for NICs? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:07:24 -0000 Personally, I've had the best success with fxp and em cards (Intel), and the worst with broadcom-based on-board nics, but have tried and worked with many different cards over the years on FreeBSD. Hands-down though, I prefer Intel's NIC offerings. IIRC - Intel contributed to the development and supports the fxp driver too, so I've always tried to send my business to the vendor which supports my specific use of their product rather than the one which expects me or requires me to rely solely on the reverse-engineering and support of the open-source community to figure it out themselves. To me, I feel a whole lot 'safer' with the knowledge that the hardware manufacturer knows and understands my application better than the next guy (cough* insert plug for Apple anyone?). Just my opinion and experience though - I offer no technical merit as I've honestly not bothered to try anything else in recent years (habitually stick with what works I guess). -- Nathan Vidican nathan@vidican.com On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:27 PM, John wrote: > This used to be a hot topic long ago, but now seems to have become > rather dormant. Does that mean that all NICs are pretty much > commodity with all the good features (unaligned scatter/gather, > etc), or does it just mean that machine performance has grown to > the point where we don't care anymore? The hardware.html page > tells me what may owrk, but not what may work WELL. The on-board > NIC uses the fxp driver. Should I look for another card that uses > the same driver? Are those good, or are both good and "bad" cards > supproted by the same driver? The list doesn't give any of the > featuers which used to be assocaited with "good" or "bad" cards - > just the names. > > Thanks! > -- > > John Lind > john@starfire.MN.ORG > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to " > freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >