Tulip 4 port ethernet card owners unite!

[acemcmac]

Well, now that I'm done my system overhaul, I have found myself with an Intel 4 port (Tulip) 10/100 PCI NIC... 32-bit. I've heard all kinds of things about how these can act as integrated switches, how you can bond them together for 400megabits, etc. I'm just curious how other people use these cards. I tried using them separately at a LAN party once while I was hosting but I never got activity on more than two ports, but then when I bonded them together I got up to 90% utilization I've noticed that none of the switch style led's ever light up, and some of the port LED's never light up either....


Since most of the information on the internet regarding these cards involves linux integration, I thought I'd just ask around for anand member's experiences. I just don't know enough about how this card works to be able to use it intelligently...

 

[cmetz]

acemcmac, a four-port card is four NICs on one board.

They are not switches - though you could use your PC as a bridge and make them into a switch, that would be using a several hundred dollar board and a several hundred dollar PC into a twenty dollar 4-port switch, not a particularly good idea. You can do link aggregation (goes by several different names) to make an effectively >100Mb/s channel, but gigabit is cheaper and less headache.

The thing to do with these is to treat them as multiple NICs. Sometimes, for example for a firewall, you really need multiple NICs on a PC and you don't want to burn many slots to do it. That's what these are good for.

 

[skyking]

I will be doing that exact thing later this month with mine, and creating different LAN segments with the other three ports, using freebsd and IPFW. I have no clue how this is going to go, so wish me luck.....
If I can get it figured out, it will be nice for seperating the relatively insecure wireless segment from the wired segment, and for putting the webserver off on its own, etc.

 

[acemcmac]

cmetz,

Yeah, I'm only going off what little I do know about these boards- they were first introduced to me as 4 port pci ethernet switches, so I'm sorry if I still think of them that way... I've gotten link agrigation to work just fine with the help you have already given me in other threads. It's better than gigabit for me because I have not yet been to a lan with a gigabit switch and I never anticipate to.

However, I'm sure that there is more that this board is capiable of doing that I am just unable to tap at the moment. When I have all four ports plugged into a swich, oftentimes, seemingly random LEDs on the ports don't light up... It doesent seem to be related to the cables or the switch... its just something weird I noticed. I also noticed that the square bank of LED's that look like they came off a switch never light... I still have a lot to figure out here...

does anyone else have any experience with these boards?

 

[cmetz]

acemcmac, exactly which board do you have, what OS, and what driver? There's no good reason why the LEDs on the board shouldn't behave correctly.

 

[bex0rs]

I've got a Phobos card similar to the one acemcmac has. The rear LEDs on mine do not light up either. IIRC there are also LED headers on the PCB but I never bothered to check if they worked.

~bex0rs

 

[Buddha Bart]

That'd be cool for one of those ultra-mini PC's you see for sale with only one PCI slot. Figure, LAN, WAN, Wireless/untrusted, and DMZ.

 

[skyking]

That would be nice........ I am using an old HP vectra that way later on next month, and may be asking you about how to get that going.

 

[SaigonK]

Well if anyone needs a Quad Nic, I have an adaptec model for sale.
Of course it is a 64bit server version.