Disable the onboard NIC and use the external PCI or use them all on an HP T620?
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Just ordered an HP T620 that's soon to be here. I also picked up an intel quad NIC card for it.
Do you disable the onboard nic and use only the ports on the PCI NIC for both WAN and LAN or the onboard for WAN and the others for LAN?
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If the onboard is NOT Intel, and I believe it is not, that would be ideal for a "not too fast" WAN connection. By not too fast, I mean a sub 100 - 150Mb connection to the internet. It might be able to do more, but I don't know for sure. It has been discussed here many times of Realtek NICs falling flat on their faces when used as hi-speed (at or close to 1Gb speed) LAN ports.
I didn't look it up, but correct me if I'm wrong, is the single built-in NIC a Realtek? If so, that's not suitable for a LAN facing connection.
Jeff
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I think you're correct, they're realtek cards.
I have a 200 DL and 5 UL connection. I won't need all 4 ports anyways, I'll just bypass the onboard one so no questions asked here.
On the same note, I had a old dell server with some Xeon X3440 that put PFsense on to mess with, everytime I plug the external NIC it, it doesn't detect y ports up or down. Without it the dual onboard NIC works fine. Hoping I won't run into the same problem with the HP
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You can always try it and see. There's a Realtek driver around here somewhere that was supposed to fix (band-aid) some/most of the communication problems with the cheaper network adapters. Or, just skip it like you said.
If it were me, to avoid confusion in the future, or if you're fumbling around in the back of the box, or in the dark, I'd stick an empty RJ45 plug into the onboard NIC so I didn't plug anything into it by accident.
Jeff
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@cheapie408 Here's some talk about the Realtek driver(s):
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/135850/official-realtek-driver-binary-1-95-for-2-4-4-release
Jeff
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I have an HP T620+ with an intel quad port NIC. I did not disable the onboard NIC but I also don't use it.
I have my WAN and LAN's on the intel and everything seems very stable.
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I still don't have the HP yet but on the current Supermicro board and the two onboard intel NIC, it would drop ping every 20-30 seconds. I'm using the latest build and only the two onboard NIC.
However, when it did work, my speed test yield much better performance than the Asus router that I'm using now. on my 200mbps connection I've only yield 160 ish down but when using PFSense I'm getting closer to the advertised speeds so it's definiteyl a good start.