FYI Those cheap Chinese i350-T4/AM4 nics on ebay work!
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Hey all,
Just wanted to let you all know that I decided to be a guinea pig and bought one of those 4 port i350 nics from Chinese seller. This morning I had a chance to put it in my pfsense box running Pre-2.1.1 and it worked like a charm. Seems to be faster than the dual PT I had in there also.
I managed to get it for $99 shipped (significantly cheaper than the other options).
Just fyi
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thats good to hear, what sort of throughput & CPU utilisation did you see - same as official Intel T4 board?
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Mine came with an corrupted eeprom….
Currently trying to fix it ... or RMA back to china.
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I have seen 4gb/s over it.
As for CPU load, it is very low.
I have not tested vs a true t4
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Are there any PFSense configuration options (stable) that can be configured to take advantage of i350 NIC advanced features?
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Not 100% sure but all the advanced options work except "disable hardware large receive offload".
I only tested it with an i210 single port NIC but it should be pretty much the same as one single i350.
See screenshot.
enabling the Hardware large receive offloading brings your network/internet speed down to a crawl.
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Not 100% sure but all the advanced options work except "disable hardware large receive offload".
I only tested it with an i210 single port NIC but it should be pretty much the same as one single i350.
See screenshot.
enabling the Hardware large receive offloading brings your network/internet speed down to a crawl.
Worked fine for me…
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@G.D.:
Are there any PFSense configuration options (stable) that can be configured to take advantage of i350 NIC advanced features?
I've wondered this also, but kept forgetting to ask. Flexible Port Partitioning(SR-IOV) comes to mind.
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I confirm that something funky is happening when unchecking the “Disable hardware large receive offload” option with 2.1.3-release (AMD64) and eBay sourced i350-T4.
With that checkbox off (and pfSense restarted) the iperf, measuring WAN-LAN traversal speed, hangs and never completes the test (or I do not wait long enough for it to complete).
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It's been a while since the last person responded to this subject - so I'll ask another question: are these adapters compatible with std. Intel Windows drivers? What firmware is it loaded with?
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Hey, Keljian. I've been thinking about getting an energy efficient 4port network card and am wondering how well that I350-T4 Chinese knockoff has been holding up for you and if you've had any issues with since you've had it and how well it works with Pfsense 2.2.4 with the new 10.+ kernel.
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Now that several people have used various knockoff/clones for awhile, apparently they don't always last quite as long as the properly built ones…
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/comparison-intel-i350-t4-genuine-vs-fake.6917/
Cheaper caps/filters/etc will always rear their ugly little heads somewhere :(
Going for the server pulls from a known in-country liquidator is the better cheapskate option IMO, just beware that there can be some differences; e.g. SR-IOV is disabled on dell models.
If you're spending someone else's budget aka buying for work, get it new. -
Hey, Keljian. I've been thinking about getting an energy efficient 4port network card and am wondering how well that I350-T4 Chinese knockoff has been holding up for you and if you've had any issues with since you've had it and how well it works with Pfsense 2.2.4 with the new 10.+ kernel.
Worked fine until replaced yesterday with a 10gbit card. No issue whatsoever, I migrated to using pfsense in a VM, so it was on esxi, worked fine.
FYI I converted to the Mellanox connectx-2, you can get them cheap these days and they only use 7w peak.
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FYI I converted to the Mellanox connectx-2, you can get them cheap these days and they only use 7w peak.
Did you got them working in 10 GB, 20 GB, or over a Switch in 40 GBit/s mode?
There are different models on the market with single port or dual port which ones you got? -
Call me paranoid, but a cheap clone 4 port NIC from china is the last thing i'd be putting into a firewall.
IMO these would be the perfect piece of hardware to stick backdoors in, as they will likely end up in western firewalls or servers.
But hey, they are your packets.
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Call me paranoid, but a cheap clone 4 port NIC from china is the last thing i'd be putting into a firewall.
IMO these would be the perfect piece of hardware to stick backdoors in, as they will likely end up in western firewalls or servers.
But hey, they are your packets.
Paranoid.
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Call me paranoid, but a cheap clone 4 port NIC from china is the last thing i'd be putting into a firewall.
For cheap home based firewalls it might for some persons a good deal, but for me personally I would
be also afraid of these chinese products related to back-doors too. And in professional firewalls homed
and used in companies it would be a no go in my eyes. -
@BlueKobold:
Call me paranoid, but a cheap clone 4 port NIC from china is the last thing i'd be putting into a firewall.
For cheap home based firewalls it might for some persons a good deal, but for me personally I would
be also afraid of these chinese products related to back-doors too. And in professional firewalls homed
and used in companies it would be a no go in my eyes.LOL, so you guys think that FBI back-doors are Okay, Chinese back-doors are not Okay?
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I need some opinions on which to buy. Here are my options:
i350-T4 cheap chinese knockoff for $60
or
i340-T4 USED and from what I can tell from the embossed delta chips a real intel card for $45. And, I guess specifically, are there any issues with this card on PFsense?
Which do you guys think would be a better choice? I'm wanting to order ASAP, just thought I could see if I could get come quick opinions.
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@BlueKobold:
FYI I converted to the Mellanox connectx-2, you can get them cheap these days and they only use 7w peak.
Did you got them working in 10 GB, 20 GB, or over a Switch in 40 GBit/s mode?
There are different models on the market with single port or dual port which ones you got?Single port 10Gbe - Connectx-2
Can get them for about $18-25USD plus shipping on ebay. I bought two, and it turned out one was dead - the seller refunded the cost of one of the cards. I have a Chelsio T420 dual port ($80 USD + shipping) on its way to replace the dead one.
I run it connected to a mikrotik crs226 ( http://routerboard.com/CRS226-24G-2SplusIN )