Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 11:32:59 -0700 From: "Kenneth D. Merry" <ken@kdm.org> To: Thomas Stromberg <tstromberg@rtci.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Suggestions for Gigabit cards for -CURRENT Message-ID: <20000202113259.A43505@panzer.kdm.org> In-Reply-To: <3898715D.1E2FDD41@rtci.com>; from tstromberg@rtci.com on Wed, Feb 02, 2000 at 01:03:09PM -0500 References: <3898715D.1E2FDD41@rtci.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, Feb 02, 2000 at 13:03:09 -0500, Thomas Stromberg wrote: > We're currently looking at upgrading several of our FreeBSD servers > (dual PIII-600's, 66MHz PCI) and some Sun Ultra's to Gigabit Ethernet. > We plan to hook these machines into our Cisco Catalyst 5000 server. They > will most likely move to be running FreeBSD 4.x by the time that we > actually get our budget approved. What experiences do you guys have with > the cards? > > Currently we're looking at the ~$1000 range, specifically at Alteon > 512k's ($1000) for the FreeBSD servers and Sun Gigabit 2.0's ($2000) for > the Sun servers. I was interested in the Myrinet cards (for obvious > reasons), but they appear to require a Myrinet switch (though I found > myself slightly confused so I may be wrong) rather then being able to > hook into our Catalyst 5000. The Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit cards look > rather nice too, but I haven't seen drivers yet for FreeBSD (Linux yes). > > I'm pretty much purchasing on marketing and reputation rather then any > experience here, so any help would be much appreciated. I would recommend getting Alteon boards. It is likely that the Sun boards are Alteon OEM, although I'm not positive. One thing to keep in mind is that both Netgear and 3Com are OEMing Alteon boards, and you'll get them much cheaper that way. The boards are pretty much identical to the Alteon branded boards (which have no identifying marks on them). The performance is the same, at least for the Netgear boards. (I don't have any 3Com boards.) The Netgear GA620 is a 512K Tigon 2 board, and generally goes for around $300 or so. The 3Com boards have 1MB of SRAM, but I'm not sure whether they're Tigon 1 or Tigon 2. You really want a Tigon 2 board. Maybe someone who has one can comment. The Intel cards may look nice, and there is a FreeBSD driver for them, but I wouldn't get one. The first problem with the Intel boards is that there are no docs for them. Supposedly they're using a Cisco chip, and the specs for the chip are top secret. The FreeBSD driver (written by Matt Jacob) is based on the Linux driver, which Intel wrote, and he hasn't yet managed to get decent throughput through the cards. (Maybe Matt will comment.) They also only have 64K of memory on board, which is insufficient for a heavily loaded server, IMO. Even with the 512K Alteon boards, you have a minimum of about 200K, and probably more like 300K of cache for transmit and receive. The Intel boards also don't have the features necessary to really support zero copy TCP receive. The Alteon boards, on the other hand, have most of the features necessary, and if I get some time, I may add the last feature (header splitting) to the firmware. The other alternative is SysKonnect, and that might actually be a good alternative. I haven't seen the boards, don't know how much they cost, etc. etc. You might want to ask Bill Paul about them, he wrote the driver. Ken -- Kenneth Merry ken@kdm.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000202113259.A43505>