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Old 12th September 2008
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Default Dual/Quad NIC

Looking for reccomendations for either a dual or quad NIC for FreeBSD 7.x (10/100 or Gigabit) on a home server with a home budget price!
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Old 12th September 2008
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What is it you're actually trying to achieve? Typically multi-port NICs are fairly expensive. If you're going for a budget solution you might be better off buying 2 standard NICs and bridging them.
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Old 12th September 2008
dk_netsvil dk_netsvil is offline
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I've got a dozen FreeBSD machines using 4-port Dlink DFE-570TX cards - full duplex and they're fairly inexpensive.
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Old 12th September 2008
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yeah from what I've seen they are all usually quite expensive, was wondering if there was a cheaper one. I'm basically trunking interfaces into a lagg interface but I'll just go with seperate nics.
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Old 12th September 2008
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If you have the PCI/PCIe slots for them, separate NICs will be less expensive. If you don't have the extra slots, Intel make a line of PCI/PCI-X, and PCIe dual-port and quad-port NICs: Intel PRO/1000-series. These use the em(4) and ixgb(4) drivers. Very reliable NICs. We use a variety of single-port, dual-port, and quad-port versions of these at work. Can't comment on the prices, though, I just make the recommendations, and the bosses upstairs approve the funds.
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Old 15th September 2008
shassard shassard is offline
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Thumbs up RouterBoard IN/G44V

You might want to take a look at the RouterBoard IN/G44V.

http://www.routerboard.com/prices.html

It's a quad-port PCI card with four VIA gig-e chips connected using a bridge chip, which should be compatible with vge(4).

It goes for ~$100 USD.

I haven't tried one of these cards, so I can't vouch for it personally.

Last edited by shassard; 15th September 2008 at 10:11 PM.
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Old 16th September 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shassard View Post
You might want to take a look at the RouterBoard IN/G44V.

http://www.routerboard.com/prices.html

It's a quad-port PCI card with four VIA gig-e chips connected using a bridge chip, which should be compatible with vge(4).

It goes for ~$100 USD.

I haven't tried one of these cards, so I can't vouch for it personally.
You come in here with you first ever post and you take my breath away Thanks shassard, looks perfect. Site says it will work with BSD but will have to check that one out.
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Old 16th September 2008
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He's probably a Mikrotik sales rep
Actually we use RouterBoard devices here (for wireless only though). We benchmarked them against about 4 other wireless devices in its price range and it came out about 15% faster than its next closes competitor. (D-Link was 2nd place, TP-Link 3rd, and I forget the rest...)
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Old 16th September 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Weaseal View Post
He's probably a Mikrotik sales rep
.....
Hence the slighty sarcastic undetone.

What OS do you use with the RouterBoards? I'm assuming (greatly) that if the onboard NICs are supported then the quad one *should* be.
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Old 16th September 2008
shassard shassard is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Weaseal View Post
He's probably a Mikrotik sales rep
Nope :P

I'm an IT Manager and geek who loves awesome cheap gear.

Compared to Intel dual/quad NICs, this is a steal.

I'm sure the performance will suffer some considering it's just a 32bit PCI card, but if you're not pushing the card too hard at gigabit speeds, I'm not sure that you'd notice. I'd love to see some performance data if someone decides to pick one of these cards up.
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Old 16th September 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shassard View Post
Nope :P

I'm an IT Manager and geek who loves awesome cheap gear.

Compared to Intel dual/quad NICs, this is a steal.

I'm sure the performance will suffer some considering it's just a 32bit PCI card, but if you're not pushing the card too hard at gigabit speeds, I'm not sure that you'd notice. I'd love to see some performance data if someone decides to pick one of these cards up.
Well welcome to the forum none the less. I'm not sure how hard I'll be taxing these cards, I don't transfer huge amount of data that often personally but I have alot of people who visit for the odd leech so it's in mine and their best intereted to get it done as fast as possible. I'll definitely post some info on them once/if I get it which is looking more and more likely It's already on my hardware wish list.

Just need a 8-12 port Gigabit switch now.
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Old 20th September 2008
gzgeniii gzgeniii is offline
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I'd really be thinking about your trying to do.

A single gigabit ethernet connection can pump theoretically 128 MByte/sec. Factoring in overheads and real world it can probably still do 100Mbyte/sec.

You have to think of everything in between to. What type of BUS does your system have (PCI, PCI-e). PCI bus can't even really handle one gigabit adaptor to it's maximum capability once you factor in that their are going to be other devices on the bus (PCI Bus max output = 133 Meg/sec).

What sort of disk sub-system. Unless you've got a pretty good raid array setup for speed you won't get close to saturating a single gigabit connection (even for sequential reads/write - best case for speed).

Might be worth it if your using 100Mbit cards. Again depends on everything in between and what your actual goals are.

If your aiming for redundancy well that's something else again.
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Old 28th February 2009
tranquilnet tranquilnet is offline
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Default routerboard NIC in a shuttle K45

I came across this post seeking a 4 port NIC to put into a shuttle K45 mini pc to use as a home router running pfsense. My question is, would you recommend a different mini pc or small form factor like box instead of the shuttle K45? Thanks in advance. -Will
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