Re: Quad-port Fast Ethernet on Debian
On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 07:44:45PM +0200, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Am 2005-06-04 15:27:04, schrieb Miquel van Smoorenburg:
> > In article <[🔎] 20050604044220.8A57E73A0@int.zzap.org>,
> > Simon Phillips <srp@zzap.org> wrote:
> > >I am after some general advice or info on people's experiences with quad
> > >port ethernet cards. Any assistance would be much appreciated.
> > >
> > >For this, I am specifically looking to use *quad* port ethernet cards,
> > >due to the number of ports and physical size of the hardware required for my
> > >configuration. I will probably need two per box (+ onboard port = 9 ports
> > >total).
> >
> > I don't think GigE quad port ethernet cards exist, so you're
> Ehm, Intel Pro 1000MT Quad-Port Server ?
I wonder how well THAT one works...
> > talking about 9 100 mbit ports, right ? Why not use a single
> > GigE port ? If you need multiple interfaces, use VLANs.
>
> Because some people do not want to install the hell ?
> Or for security reason ?
>
> If the GBit NIC is broken, all attached subnest are down.
A single-port E1000 with VLANs will give you better performance than 10x
E100 in my experience. First, because the E1000 has much better
interrupt mitigation hardware and drivers than just about every other
NIC I know of. Second, because it is just one PCI device and not 10
trying to contend for the bus... Third, because it is *MUCH* cheaper,
so you can move that $$$ to something more important, such as more CPU
power or a server board with PCI-X/133 slots...
Even using *two* E1000 so that you get failover (with or without channel
bonding) is still a better idea than 4 or so 4-port 100Base-TX NICs
IMHO.
OTOH, you need a gigabit switch with proper VLAN security, which is not
always easy to get...
I am moving all multi-NIC routers we have to multi-NIC routers with
E1000s for that reason. Even if we keep a 100BaseTX heartbeat on a
E1000, it still behaves much better than the E100 and 3COMs we were
using...
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