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Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:45:18 -0500
From: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net>
To: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>
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Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org, Drew Linsalata <drew@gothambus.com>
Subject: Re: Multiport NICs - VLAN and Polling Support?
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On Thu, Oct 13, 2005 at 12:21:39PM -0400 I heard the voice of
Chuck Swiger, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> Most of the 4-port NICs I've seen use the DEC Tulip 21x4x,

And most of 'em are hideously expensive, too.  I've wished a couple of
times for multi-port NIC's that aren't wacky priced.

And it seems like it finally happened, too.  Soekris, in addition to
their SBC's, has 2- and 4-port NIC's now.

<http://www.soekris.com/lan16x1.htm>

I believe they use the sis(4) driver, which in my experience has been
stable and not hideously low performance.  I don't use polling or
VLAN's, but a glance at the manpages suggests polling seems to support
sis, and VLAN's will work too (with software assist).  And they're
reasonably priced, too ($63 and $89, for 2- and 4-port respectively).


-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd@over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.