Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 23:17:50 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Justin C Sherrill" <justin@shiningsilence.com>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Gavin Kenny" <gavinkenny@yahoo.co.uk> Subject: RE: Recommend a NIC Message-ID: <000f01c10f51$5f04c400$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <01071710452601.00402@roc-24-169-96-227.rochester.rr.com>
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There are significant differences between NIC's. If you read any trade magazines regularly, such as Network Computing, periodically they do "bake-offs" ie. comparison studies between NICS. It's like their favorite thing to do. The poorer Ethernet designs are slower, use much more CPU and generate a lot more RFI. Also they have much more potential for problems in many more systems. Granted you may not have noticed what you might call a statistically significant problem but I can bet that when you DO run across a system with a problem that a better quality NIC would solve it. Also consider that hardware incompatibilities most frequently manifest themselves as intermittent problems, not bizarre showstoppers. There's probably many systems that you put cheap NICs in that appeared to work fine but weeks later had a much higher incidence of problems. Since Windows itself is not a very good OS, the general populace has been programmed these days to accept intermittent problems and crashes as a normal part of the computing experience. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Justin C >Sherrill >Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 7:45 AM >To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Cc: Gavin Kenny >Subject: Re: Recommend a NIC > > >On Tuesday 17 July 2001 07:18, you wrote: > >> My boss has said I can buy some new NIC's. So what >> does everyone suggest? > >Other than the occasional glitch, there's very little difference between >Ethernet cards by manufacturer. Find a cheap one (or 10, in your >case), make >sure it's supported, and you will probably be OK. > >The difference between, say, a 3Com card and a generic card with a RealTek >chipset is only the price. My workplace (cable ISP) installs/supplies >several hundred Ethernet cards each week to new customers, and the average >results have borne this out. > >Justin > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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