OT: Maximum number of fast ethernet cards

["Pete Clarke" <pete@devilincarnate.eclipse.co.uk>]

Hi there,

This is slightly offtopic, but does anyone know the maximum number of fast 
ethernet cards a typical PC can handle..?
I want to use a cheap (ish) Debian box as a firewall/router to suppliment my 
Netgear, and provide more services to the internal network than currently 
available.

With this in mind, I was intending on slapping a load of dual portal network 
cards into a redundant PC.
I remember reading a while back that the ultimate limit will be the PCI bus 
bandwidth - with this in mind, what would be the maximum number of NIC's I 
could realistically install into a PC?

Cheers,



Pete.