Intel atom 330 vs 230 ?
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Do your homework before selecting dual NIC cards. I've seen some which are PCI-Express x4 cards which won't go into a PCI Express x1 slot.
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As far as I can tell there's little to no difference between the server and desktop Intel cards. I can't find any difference in capabilities or performance, and when I posed the question nobody was able to come up with anything. I think the desktop cards are fine, and excellent. You should keep them, they will work well.
Yes, well I also cant find any difference, so I will prob keep them. Thx 4 sharing with us.
As for Walleybob, Yea all dual PCIe cards seems to run on 4x and higher, I have a free x16 port with 8 lanes on the motherboard so that woulden't be a problem.
After the summer when I wanna get up to gigabit speeds, if the 2x PT 1000 dosen't do the job, ill put them in my home servers and get something else.
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As far as I can tell there's little to no difference between the server and desktop Intel cards.
Then you obviously haven't been doing your research ;) There is a world of difference between them.
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I'm using the D-Link 4 port PCI server card and it works great with PfSense. I paid like $50 on ebay so I bought one more as a spare.
I like having 4 ports on a single card as I have plans to swap out the old Dell OtpiPlex GX150 1Ghz PIII with the Atom 330. So looking for a small form factor box that doesn't have to look like a huge desktop PC as a router and lower power consumption too.
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@Cry:
Then you obviously haven't been doing your research ;) There is a world of difference between them.
Care to elaborate? I can't even find any substantial difference between them in Intel's marketing materials. They seem to use the same chipsets, report the same capabilities to the OS, and all support CRC offload and segmentation offload, along with hardware VLAN tagging and so on. If there's such a difference I'd really be interested to know what it is. Compare the web feature lists.
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Historically the server cards result in a significantly lower CPU (interrupt) load than the desktop cards. If you look through this forum and the archives of many network specific FreeBSD and Linux mailing lists you'll see others reporting the same difference.
A quick check of the stuff you link to shows that (for example) the controllers are different - the Desktop PCIe card uses the 82574L controller, the Server cards use the 82572GI, 82571GB or 82576 controllers. Also, the desktop controller is only PCIe 1.1 and a single lane. The server controllers start there and go up.
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Also if you compare the datasheets of the two:
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/pro1000_pt_desktop_adapter.pdf
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/pro1000_pt_server_adapter.pdfDesktop:
Network Operating Systems (NOS) Software Support
Microsoft Windows* Professional, XP, 2000 •
Red Hat Linux* 2.4x or later (32- and 64-bit) •
Novell Netware* 5.x, 6.x •Server:
Microsoft Windows* Server 2003, Enterprise, Datacenter (32- & 64-bit) •
Microsoft Windows 2000 •
Red Hat Linux* 2.4x or later (32- and 64-bit) •
FreeBSD 4.x or later •
Novell Netware* 5.x, 6.x •
Sun Solaris* x86, OS 8 and later •
SCO Open Server 5, OpenUNIX 8* •Apparently FreeBSD is "officially" only supported with the server card.
But the main difference are mostly in the advanced featuers:
Desktop:
Advanced Software Features
Test switch configuration Tested with major switch original equipment manufacturers (OEMS)
TCP checksum offload—transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagram protocol (UDP), Internet protocol (IP) •
IEEE 802.1p*, Intel
Priority Packet II •
TCP segmentation/large send offload •
Interrupt moderation •Server:
Adapter fault tolerance (AFT) •
Switch fault tolerance (SFT) •
Adaptive load balancing (ALB) •
Fast EtherChannel4 (FEC) •
Gigabit EtherChannel4 (GEC) •
Teaming support Scales up to 4 connections
Multiple teams Supports 2 separate teams, maximum
IEEE 802.3ad* (link aggregation control protocol)4 •
Test switch configuration Tested with major switch original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
PCIe Hot Plug*/Active peripheral component interconnect (PCI) •
IEEE 802.1Q* VLANs •
IEEE 802.3* (z, ab, u, x) flow control support •
TCP checksum offload — transmission control protocol (TCP), user datagram protocol (UDP), •
Internet protocol (IP)
IEEE 802.1p* •
TCP checksum/large send offload •
Interrupt moderation • -
Also don't forget the huge difference in cost between desktop and server NICs.
Just have to weigh that in and see if it's really worth it. If the router is going to be used in a corporate or enterprise environment might as well get decent hardware to support it.
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Concerning the claimed differences between the Intel PRO/1000 PT "desktop" and "server" NICs I confess to being a little unconvinced that all those differences noted actually reflect a significant difference in capability when used with the FreeBSD drivers. For instance, both documents claim the same chipset but VLAN support is listed only for the "server" version. (Maybe there is a board jumper or configuration ROM difference that disables VLAN support on the desktop variant.) PCI Express Hotplug support is listed for the server variant but FreeBSD doesn't support PCI Express hotplug. The server datasheet extols the virtues of "receive side scaling" but I can't see any evidence this is supported on FreeBSD.
Some of the noted differences are under the category of "advanced software features" in the datasheets which presumably means software needs some smarts to provide these features which may mean there isn't really any hardware difference affecting the feature. For example, the driver in "desktop" Windows may not provide link aggregation whereas the driver in "server" Windows might.
Is this another example of a supplier feeling they can get away with charging more for a product with a "server" tag over the same product (or effectively the same) product with a "desktop" tag?
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Concerning the claimed differences between the Intel PRO/1000 PT "desktop" and "server" NICs I confess to being a little unconvinced that all those differences noted actually reflect a significant difference in capability when used with the FreeBSD drivers. For instance, both documents claim the same chipset but VLAN support is listed only for the "server" version. (Maybe there is a board jumper or configuration ROM difference that disables VLAN support on the desktop variant.) PCI Express Hotplug support is listed for the server variant but FreeBSD doesn't support PCI Express hotplug. The server datasheet extols the virtues of "receive side scaling" but I can't see any evidence this is supported on FreeBSD.
Some of the noted differences are under the category of "advanced software features" in the datasheets which presumably means software needs some smarts to provide these features which may mean there isn't really any hardware difference affecting the feature. For example, the driver in "desktop" Windows may not provide link aggregation whereas the driver in "server" Windows might.
Is this another example of a supplier feeling they can get away with charging more for a product with a "server" tag over the same product (or effectively the same) product with a "desktop" tag?
Im just an amaterur, but its not unusual for manufactuers to provide same chip on 2 different stuff and charge 2x more for one just because there are software enabled stuff on the expensive one. We should
all have a little critisim to products and not just tag along with the information they provide us with.
