Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:56:17 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey@goldmark.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Good FreeBSD Supported Gigabit Ethernet Card? Message-ID: <20070914145617.GA1166@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> In-Reply-To: <376AEE90-3D17-43A9-AF2F-273DE382666C@goldmark.org> References: <46EA192E.7030807@gmail.com> <46EA2955.5050802@gmail.com> <376AEE90-3D17-43A9-AF2F-273DE382666C@goldmark.org>
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On Fri, Sep 14, 2007 at 08:55:33AM -0500, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > On Sep 14, 2007, at 1:25 AM, Subhro Kar wrote: > > >No offence meant, but why would you like to upgrade a "home" > >network to Gbit? Is it required at all? > > I've been slowly undertaking the same kind of upgrade and so would > like to know whether my reasons are sound. > > As of six months ago all of the daily used desktops (three) in my > house are gigabit, but none of the servers are. For the past year or > so any time I bought a new switch, I've bought a gigabit switch. I'm a touch concerned about the number of switches your network might have. Is best to bite the bullet and get single big central switch. > Eventually I would like to have a proper NAS sharing out home > directories. The desktops are all OS X. Some members of the > household play with iMovie which involves some very large files. Might be best to leave home directories on individual machines and add network storage that each user has control over. > I don't know when I'll get around to setting up the NAS, but many > decisions I make today keep that goal in mind. Thus, I am migrating > to gigabit on my home network. When I do build the NAS, I will > certainly be looking for a good FreeBSD supported gigabit ethernet card. Years ago I bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC 2.8GHz for about $400 direct. Has an on board 10/100/1000 Intel served by the FreeBSD em driver. Has been completely without issue. Wire speed between FreeBSD and MacOS X machines is essentially same as disk speed. The striped drives in my Mac Pro will sustain 90 MB/sec but would not when they were installed in the FreeBSD machine. Have no problems playing DVDs created in iMovie/iDVD on my MacBook Pro via wireless from the Free BSD drives. Use NFS to share from FreeBSD, double-click to mount the .iso image on the MacBook, launch Apple's DVD player. Eject the image when done. > Do I really need gigabit? Of course not. But I don't really need > most of the stuff I do. I remember when a PC ethernet card was $1000 and required $400 of software to barely make it work under DOS. Today gigabit and plain old "fast" ethernet are virtually the same price. Is best to go ahead and get gigabit. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@HiWAAY.net ======================================================================== Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
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