Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2018 12:13:31 -0800 From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@tristatelogic.com> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Recommendations for cheap PCI-E network adapter ? Message-ID: <18959.1515010411@segfault.tristatelogic.com> In-Reply-To: <CAKfTJoWLPvC28=kPWE5oJYW87p%2BqbjB6zKwSpzfOoTjK1wBTWw@mail.gmail.com>
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In message <CAKfTJoWLPvC28=kPWE5oJYW87p+qbjB6zKwSpzfOoTjK1wBTWw@mail.gmail.com>, John Lyon <johnllyon@gmail.com> wrote: >What's your use case? If this is for a home box, developer box, or >something that is not "enterprise production," then I wouldn't worry about >RealTek cards bought in the last 5 years. Their 10/100 cards from 15 years >ago were crap, which is how they earned their bad reputation. However, the >continuing dismissiveness towards RealTek is mostly undeserved in my >opinion. This is just for my home network. Not "mission critical", but I don't want my equipment being eternally flaky, of course. And I am not enthused about the possibility of having to frequently build and/or install a new driver that isn't in the stock FreeBSD releases. >The issue currently is the state of the drivers themselves and not the >cards. For example, the drivers themselves that FreeBSD includes have >problems. However, you can always download the source code to the latest >FreeBSD drivers from the RealTek website and all of the "bugs" disappear. Hummm... Am I being naive to ask why, if there are better drivers available, they do not get rolled into -CURRENT? >That said, if you're cost sensitive, buy your NICS used. Oh yes! This is for a "new" system build for which I am buying everything as used parts. Depending on which specific motherboard I decide to go with, I may or may not have a good old fashioned PCI slot to work with on the motherboard. If I do, then I'm good, because as I discovered last night, I have/had, sitting inside a box of old parts up on my top shelf, no fewer than four (4) Realtek cards, two (2) Intel cards, two (2) Netgear cards, one (1) HP card, and even one ancient 3Com 3C509B card. (I'm pretty sure that all of these are 10/100 cards. They are definitely all PCI.) The problem is that all these cards are verging on being obsolete now, because many newer motherboards... and even ones that are several years old now... have dropped the old fashioned PCI slots altogether (e.g. ASUS B85M-G). >Last time I checked, the going rate for >used Intel NICS was something like $10 per port + shipping. I think used >Broadcom NICS were similar in pricing. Really? Where? I checked on FleaBay and as far as -Intel- PCI-E cards, the best I could find was about $12 USD. I don't know how to search FleaBay for Broadcom-based cards, because I don't know any relevant model numbers (or even manufacturer names).
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