Intel Pro 10/100 NICS

[InlineFour]

i'm planning on buying a couple cheap NICS for my servers. i've read and experienced that intel make very reliable NICS. are the intel pro 10/100 NICs the best for the money?

 

[eelw]

Yes, Intel Pro are very reliable NICs, but any $5 NIC will do.

 

[nweaver]

no, any $5 nic won't do...especially for a server. There are several less expensive nics based of the Intel Pro 100, and are only a little more. Spend the little extra, it's worth it in the long run. If you have the cash, an Intel Pro 1000 is running 30-50 in some online stores, and is a fantastic NIC as well.

 

[cmetz]

InlineFour, you can get the Intel 10/100/1000 NICs for not much more. Maybe even cheaper now. The 10/100 NICs are good NICs, but if you can get the gigabit part for the same price, you might as well.

They also sell "server" NICs that are in the $100 price range. I don't understand what more you get for the extra $$ - Intel does go to some lengths to hide technical details

 

[eelw]

Originally posted by: nweaver
no, any $5 nic won't do...especially for a server. There are several less expensive nics based of the Intel Pro 100, and are only a little more. Spend the little extra, it's worth it in the long run. If you have the cash, an Intel Pro 1000 is running 30-50 in some online stores, and is a fantastic NIC as well.

I highly doubt the OP is running any mission critical app on his server. I home server can easily run on a $5 NIC.

 

[spikespiegal]

Intel makes a lot of chipsets for NIC's. Let's get that straight.

I have no issues with Intel based fault tolerant NIC's, but I still think the classic 3Com fault tolerant 3c980 server card is a better card for cheap money.

I have no issues with all my Xeon servers running Intel 10/100/1000s, but I'm sick of getting new drivers revisions for the cards every other frikken time I do a windows update. Worth the hassle with gig, not worth the hassl with 10/100.

 

[wlee]

I agree, get the Intel GigE cards. They're about $30 for retail boxed. If your server has 64bit slots, then it is worth getting the real server edition cards. Those are about $120 though. A $5 NIC isn't worth the agrevation you will have to deal with.

 

[n0cmonkey]

People still buy 10/100 cards?

 

[InlineFour]

ah, i found 5 intel 10/100 for about $20 shipped on ebay. i thought i couldn't pass it up. i still use a 10/100 switch so i thought it wasn't worth it to buy a 1000.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: InlineFour
ah, i found 5 intel 10/100 for about $20 shipped on ebay. i thought i couldn't pass it up. i still use a 10/100 switch so i thought it wasn't worth it to buy a 1000.

For that price it might be worth it.

 

[p0lar]

Most Intel 10/100 NICs (fxp(4)) based on the 8255x chipset are capable of interrupt coalescing, making them excellent for relatively high-pps applications on lower-grade hardware.

:thumbsup:

 

[cmetz]

p0lar, so do the em(4)s last I checked. As far as I can tell, the 1000 is a superset of the functionality of the 100, so there's no downside to getting the 1000.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: cmetz
p0lar, so do the em(4)s last I checked. As far as I can tell, the 1000 is a superset of the functionality of the 100, so there's no downside to getting the 1000.

Yeah, I couldn't remember on the em(4)'s and hadn't dug much into the driver itself so I wasn't going to go out on that limb, but they're reasonably priced too, IMHO.

 

[Sunner]

Well, after seeing them being warmly recommended on the OpenBSD lists, I picked up a couple of SysKonnect based LinkSys GigE NIC's.
Amazing cards, my firewall saw a significant performance increase compared to the old EEPro cards I had in there, and those aren't bad cards either.

Cheap too, got mine for around $30.