Would Gigabit cards be necessary?

P

Private_Ops

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2007
Messages
1,870
I'm going to redo my firewall running IPfire.

Specs:

Core 2 Duo E6600 (Wolfdale)
4GBs DDR3 RAM
80GB Seagates in RAID 1 (Cause I want to)
PCI 10/100 network cards
Click to expand...


My internet speeds are only 30/5 with TWC... I personally don't think it's worth the upgrade to gigabit cards but, wanted to see what the network guru's of the forum think.
 
only if you are copying files from other wired machines.
 
Zepher said:
only if you are copying files from other wired machines.
Click to expand...

Not even then, unless he's got multiple LAN subnets and he's using the firewall to route between them. Any transfers on a shared subnet would only cross the switch and never hit the router.

Given the (limited) info the OP has given, there's no benefit to upgrading the NICs.

However, that is a lot of machine (and a lot of power used) given the bandwidth of that link. Scaling down to one of the Atom or Celerons, or getting something like an EdgeRouter, would go a long ways towards alleviating that.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
Not even then, unless he's got multiple LAN subnets and he's using the firewall to route between them. Any transfers on a shared subnet would only cross the switch and never hit the router.

Given the (limited) info the OP has given, there's no benefit to upgrading the NICs.

However, that is a lot of machine (and a lot of power used) given the bandwidth of that link. Scaling down to one of the Atom or Celerons, or getting something like an EdgeRouter, would go a long ways towards alleviating that.
Click to expand...


I didn't figure gigabit cards would do me any good. I'm simply using hardware I have. It was running on an Athlon 3500+ but I'm going to recondition it into a retro rig. My network pretty much consists of my cable modem, firewall, and an Archer C7 with the routing disabled.
 
eh... you can get Intel dual-port Pro/1000 PT server adapters on eBay for $20 these days. Seems a bit silly to only go with 100Mbps cards/onboard LAN regardless of your connection speed, especially if the 100Mbps cards/onboard LAN use some shit brand chipset (realtek, etc). If you were stuck on 6Mbps DSL, would you be okay building your router with 10Base-T cards because they are fast enough? I'm guessing not...

It also depends on exactly how your ISP operates. On Comcast, even if you only have a <60Mbps plan, you can still often see burst speeds up over 100Mbps. That would be reason enough for me to use Gigabit cards, again considering how cheap they are.
 
Unless your ISP gives you bursts above 100 megs....likely not.
But even then, you probably just have a "desktop grade" motherboard, meaning...so you should check to see what the PCI bus is on that motherboard. If it's just a 32 bit 33MHz bus...you have 133 MB/s of max bandwidth that can flow through it, and that is "shared" bandwidth across all devices using that bus. Factor in overhead, and sharing, and "real world" throughput is typically 70-90 MB/s. So you can stick gigabit NICs in there and they'll be stuck running in first gear...and a 100 meg card wasnt' even able to run at full capacity.

Research different types of PCI bus and see which your mobo has.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Unless your ISP gives you bursts above 100 megs....likely not.
But even then, you probably just have a "desktop grade" motherboard, meaning...so you should check to see what the PCI bus is on that motherboard. If it's just a 32 bit 33MHz bus...you have 133 MB/s of max bandwidth that can flow through it, and that is "shared" bandwidth across all devices using that bus. Factor in overhead, and sharing, and "real world" throughput is typically 70-90 MB/s. So you can stick gigabit NICs in there and they'll be stuck running in first gear...and a 100 meg card wasnt' even able to run at full capacity.

Research different types of PCI bus and see which your mobo has.
Click to expand...

In what context would a "100 meg card" not be able to "run at full capacity" as a result of limitations of the PCI bus? There are 8 bits in a byte. PCI is 133Megabytes/sec. Gigabit is 125Megabytes/sec, still within the limits of a traditional PCI bus. 100Megabit Ethernet is 12.5Megabytes/sec... probably not limited by the 133Megabytes/sec PCI bus.
 
GotNoRice said:
In what context would a "100 meg card" not be able to "run at full capacity" as a result of limitations of the PCI bus? There are 8 bits in a byte. PCI is 133Megabytes/sec. Gigabit is 125Megabytes/sec, still within the limits of a traditional PCI bus. 100Megabit Ethernet is 12.5Megabytes/sec... probably not limited by the 133Megabytes/sec PCI bus.
Click to expand...

With dual 100 NICs (sorry I didn't state two of them)...I recall reading some *nix router based tech forums back then...where certain chipsets just crippled it when you had a pair of PCI NICs in an older slower PCI bus type. "perhaps" more related to what types of chipsets were on the mobo, southbridge or northbridge maybe? Can't recall the details as that (100 meg NICs) was a long time ago. But hence why servers tended to have 64 bit PCI and 66 MHz ones and PCI-X (all pre PCI-e stuff)

I'm sure there were more variables in whatever article I read back then, type of NIC (realsuk, kingston, whatever...versus a nice 3COM 905 or Intel Ether Pro)..that had an impact too. Can't remember all the top brands from back then, regardless of how many thousands went through my hands 20 years ago.
 
Last edited:
I don't see the point in running that system at all in the first place. You are looking at 50w-70w at idle all the time. Running 24/7 at $0.10 per kilowatt hour you are looking at $43/yr in electricity @ 50w. My core2duo pfsense rig idled at 83w! You can run pfSense on much more power efficient hardware and achieve far better speeds. Heck, for $150 you can get the pfsense sg-1000 that's coming out later this month.

Even if you still want to build your own, why not spend the $150-$200 and have a router that uses 15w or less, will last 3+ yrs & handle 200-300mbit. At least you'll know you won't have to upgrade the router at all.
 
bds1904 said:
I don't see the point in running that system at all in the first place. You are looking at 50w-70w at idle all the time. Running 24/7 at $0.10 per kilowatt hour you are looking at $43/yr in electricity @ 50w. My core2duo pfsense rig idled at 83w! You can run pfSense on much more power efficient hardware and achieve far better speeds. Heck, for $150 you can get the pfsense sg-1000 that's coming out later this month.

Even if you still want to build your own, why not spend the $150-$200 and have a router that uses 15w or less, will last 3+ yrs & handle 200-300mbit. At least you'll know you won't have to upgrade the router at all.
Click to expand...


I'm aware I can get something much more power efficient. The point was using what i already have. If money was no objective I would have something much nicer.


But anyway, ended up using pfsense on it this time around, we'll see how it does. Ended up just using a single drive, the installer freaked out if they were set in RAID.

NICs are Netgear FA310TX's. They were free to me.
 
bds1904 said:
I don't see the point in running that system at all in the first place. You are looking at 50w-70w at idle all the time. Running 24/7 at $0.10 per kilowatt hour you are looking at $43/yr in electricity @ 50w. My core2duo pfsense rig idled at 83w! You can run pfSense on much more power efficient hardware and achieve far better speeds. Heck, for $150 you can get the pfsense sg-1000 that's coming out later this month.

Even if you still want to build your own, why not spend the $150-$200 and have a router that uses 15w or less, will last 3+ yrs & handle 200-300mbit. At least you'll know you won't have to upgrade the router at all.
Click to expand...

That sg-1000 has an interesting price point! Have you seen any reviews on it?
 
I would at least put a gigabit nic for the LAN side. Inter-vlan traffic will still be going through the firewall. But 10/100 will work if you don't plan to use vlans or have much traffic going through the firewall.
 
Its 2016. Why does anyone even discuss vlans anymore? Thing of the past
 
Personally, I would get gigabit adapters. You can probably find a pair for like $40 on eBay or something.

Run with what you got now, you can always upgrade NIC's later if you're ISP speeds improve.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Huh?
Click to expand...

I think he is implying that completely flat networks are more secure. You know, so one can jump from a single host to any other without any restrictions.

Faster pings - no. Regardless of what you think, you are not changing the number of hops between your network and the said website. Maybe a few ms difference but nothing should be noticeable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top