[linux] Gigabit NIC

[David Talkington]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Garrett Cooper wrote:

>    Hahaha, true. I've gone through just one Realtek 8139 card, but the
> other one has lasted me for the past 1.5 years nicely. $5 investment is
> fairly cheap for a network card :).

Cheap is nice, but stay away from Realtek if performance and reliability 
matter to you.  From FreeBSD driver file /usr/src/sys/pci/if_rl.c:

  * 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. ...

I'd go with the Intel.

- --
David Talkington
Computing and Communications
University of Washington
206-543-2144
- --
dtalk at u.washington.edu
- --
PGP key: http://staff.washington.edu/dtalk/004B8F8B.asc
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (FreeBSD)

iD8DBQFCQhDw5FKhdwBLj4sRAqjwAJ9TKLBliBU5zYHBNqA4AY9hq8/JuQCfZTEl
5muGWVF1PSBdHpVJ25toAqE=
=2R4l
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----