From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 21 13:22:29 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C33A416A403 for ; Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:22:29 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nvidican@wmptl.com) Received: from wmptl.net (mail.wmptl.com [216.8.159.133]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2778043D5E for ; Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:22:06 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nvidican@wmptl.com) Received: from [10.0.0.104] (r3140ca.wmptl.net [10.0.0.104]) by wmptl.net (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id kALDMHGo026921; Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:22:17 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from nvidican@wmptl.com) Message-ID: <4562FD87.1080105@wmptl.com> Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 08:22:15 -0500 From: Nathan Vidican User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (X11/20061027) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Frank Bonnet References: <4562CF3D.1070203@esiee.fr> In-Reply-To: <4562CF3D.1070203@esiee.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.54 on 10.0.0.80 Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: NIC driver question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:22:29 -0000 Frank Bonnet wrote: > Hello > > I will receive in few days my new mail server the machine will > be an IBM X3650 bi xeon. > > I wonder what would be the "best" network interface to > plug in (if necessary) as I don't know for now what is > the builtin interfaces in this machine. > > To be clear I'm asking gurus on what is the "best FreeBSD supported" > NIC driver to avoid eventual perfomances problems. > > Thanks a lot. As for 100mbit cards: Hands-down, Intel 'fxp'-driven cards... rock solid in terms of performance and stability; never had a single unit go bad, used hundreds of them, including dual and quad-port cards. On the gigabit side: I've had great luck with broadcom cards using the 'bge' driver, and a few intel cards utilizing the 'em', but nothing real extensive or saturated enough to authoratively say they work under extreme pressure or anything. I've got a couple of dual-opteron servers here with dual on-board broadcom gigabit cards that have ben running flawlessly for over 2 years now, (uptime 378 days on one, the others were rebooted several weeks ago to be relocated to a different rack). Knock-on-wood, no panics or mysterious network outages as of yet - so I'd say they're fairly stable - but again, never end up near saturated over here to give you an answer on performance. Anyhow, just my two cents - if you don't need gigabit, ya can't go wrong with Intel 'fxp'-driven cards :) -- Nathan Vidican nvidican@wmptl.com