Which NIC to choose?

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xnoto

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
108
Hey all,

On my custom linux router I have two NIC's, one going to my cable modem and the other going to my LAN. My Netgear server NIC took a crap on me so I recently purchased a nice 3com NIC via Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...-105-117&catalog=27&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=1

Now I have a choice for which other NIC I should use in the server along with the 3com, my Belkin 10/100 NIC or my Realtek based 10/100 NIC. Here's the Belkin:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...-314-101&catalog=27&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=1

Once I decide on which of those two I will be using in my server, I need to determine if i'm going to have the 3com NIC handle the LAN, or the WAN(cable modem).

I'm running linux smoothwall on the server(for now) with a bunch of NAT, so a lot of data is going through the LAN NIC. Something tells me that I should use the 3com for my LAN NIC, let it do all the packet management, and then push it through the Belkin/Realtek.

Any suggestions appreciated! Thanks
 
I don't think your gonna see much of a difference, your gonna be limited in speed by your cable modem way lower then what those NIC's max out at.
 
Originally posted by xnoto

I'm running linux smoothwall on the server(for now) with a bunch of NAT, so a lot of data is going through the LAN NIC. Something tells me that I should use the 3com for my LAN NIC, let it do all the packet management, and then push it through the Belkin/Realtek.
Click to expand...

Your NIC has nothing to do with the speed at which your router/firewall will process any translations so whichever you use is irrelevant. Also, your bottleneck is going to be your internet connection. You have cable which generally runs around 3 meg so you will not max out either of the NIC's, ever.

If you are looking for better quality go with 3Com or Intel, if you are looking for better speed, stop looking because in this scenario it isnt worth the effort.
 
not that it makes much of a difference for a cable/dsl router, but those cheap realtek cards are pretty horrible. Check out these comments in the freebsd driver for realtek 8129/8139

$FreeBSD: src/sys/pci/if_rl.c,v 1.126 2003/11/28 05:28:29 imp Exp $


/*
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
*
* For transmission, the chip offers a series of four TX descriptor
* registers. Each transmit frame must be in a contiguous buffer, aligned
* on a longword (32-bit) boundary. This means we almost always have to
* do mbuf copies in order to transmit a frame, except in the unlikely
* case where a) the packet fits into a single mbuf, and b) the packet
* is 32-bit aligned within the mbuf's data area. The presence of only
* four descriptor registers means that we can never have more than four
* packets queued for transmission at any one time.
*
* Reception is not much better. The driver has to allocate a single large
* buffer area (up to 64K in size) into which the chip will DMA received
* frames. Because we don't know where within this region received packets
* will begin or end, we have no choice but to copy data from the buffer
* area into mbufs in order to pass the packets up to the higher protocol
* levels.
*
* It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent
* performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or
* some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
*
* On the bright side, the 8139 does have a built-in PHY, although
* rather than using an MDIO serial interface like most other NICs, the
* PHY registers are directly accessible through the 8139's register
* space. The 8139 supports autonegotiation, as well as a 64-bit multicast
* filter.
*
Click to expand...
 
when it comes to NIC, i only trust Intel.. 3Com will be a good choice if youre not running *nix(i have some driver problem before with 3Com)

anything other then that.. for me theyre refer to crap..
 
Originally posted by JiM2100
not that it makes much of a difference for a cable/dsl router, but those cheap realtek cards are pretty horrible. Check out these comments in the freebsd driver for realtek 8129/8139
Click to expand...

Why do you think realtek cards cost less then 5 bucks each...
 
* It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent
* performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or
* some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
Click to expand...

Quoted for the :eek: factor.

My spare Linux box, built from spare parts other people would have thrown away, is a 400 Mhz Celeron.
 
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