Quad Port Gigabit PCI Card Roundup
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I just finished building a new pfSense router/firewall for my employer and had a bit of a fun time finding a quad-port gigabit Ethernet NIC that works with pfSense/fits in a shallow 1U chassis/is PCI 2.2 compatible. So I wrote up my results:
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2012/08/03/Quad-Port-PCI-Ethernet-Roundup/
Bottom line: the Sun GigaSwift Quad Port Ethernet PCI-X boards are a really good choice for pfSense on older hardware or low-power systems with only PCI 2.2 slots. You'll saturate the PCI bus, but in our case we just wanted gigabit ports so we could use jumbo frames internally.
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So the lesson is- Use Intel when possible (as always). If you can't, then research something else. ;D
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So the lesson is- Use Intel when possible (as always). If you can't, then research something else. ;D
Yup! Hopefully it saves someone else the moderately priced expense of learning that the PRO/1000 MT cards lack a 5V notch though!
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So the lesson is- Use Intel when possible (as always). If you can't, then research something else. ;D
Yup! Hopefully it saves someone else the moderately priced expense of learning that the PRO/1000 MT cards lack a 5V notch though!
Luckily for me, I had scavenged a bunch from an old job that were going out to surplus, so my lesson was free. I did end up with a bunch of straight PCI Quad Port 10/100 cards out of the deal, though. Some D-Link based some custom cards with Intel chipsets behind a bridge, all handy. (some POE from the card even! They came from an old wireless management system.) I built a big switch in Windows out of 'em by bridging all 20 ports from 5 cards together, 'twas the worst performing switch I think I've ever used. M0n0wall would recognize them, but I didn't know what to do with a router with 22 ports (2 on the motherboard.)
It's probably bad to put a recovering tech pack rat in charge of non-inventoried server/network surplus.
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Thank you for the writeup, very helpful.
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I think the image that explains your PCI Voltage notches best is here:
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Yup! Hopefully it saves someone else the moderately priced expense of learning that the PRO/1000 MT cards lack a 5V notch though!
This is a little of an odd situation. Older revisions of the Quad-port MT are actually universal. In the last revision, they (Intel) silently switched the cards to 3v3 only. No mention of this in any documentation of any form from them.
The dual-ports are still universally keyed though.
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Thank you, Glitch. I've been looking a long time for a quad-port card to use in my d510mo. I just now bought a Sun model 501-6738-10 on Ebay for 19 bucks with free shipping. I hope it's a hassle free install with Pfsense 2.0.1.
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Sweet! My quad card came today! I can verify this quad card works right out of the box with Pfsense!
For the people who make Pfsense:
Please make sure that this QUAD Sun network driver always stays in Pfsense and for all future releases. THANK YOU
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Tried to update the previous thread, but it wouldn't let me.
The Sun Microsystems GigaSwift Quad Port PCI-X Adapter (501-6738-10) in the Atom d510mo machine crashes after about every 48 hours or so of usage, consistently. The only solution for me was to pull the card out and let Pfsense run by itself with only the one nic installed plus the integrated one in my Atom and then it's back to 100% stable everday. I don't know if it's the drivers or the card, but it doesn't work right.
I recently purchased a Firebox x750e and I'm gonna go the Pfsense conversion route (no pun intended) this time to get the quad ports I wanted :) . Oh well, hope this time it'll work right.
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I have a bunch of cards that fail over to passthrough, PCIx with a bridge and 2x dual intel GBE
works great.
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null
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Tried this card (501-6738-10/qgexpci) and system would hang at probing phy failed, only the led's for the first nic will light up.
I just wanted to post to let everyone know this card is a gamble as the user above seems to have no problem but others have had the same issue as me. I wished to also post in the following threads in case it helps anyone from making the same mistake but they appear to be locked.
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=46799.0;prev_next=prev
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,33960.0.htmlI also previously got stung by the quad port mt (and posted about this).
