Preferred NIC's?
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Is there ONE certain NIC anyone can tell me would work without fail.
No I don not use 3COM. Actually I kept getting kernel panic's with a 3COM card :P
Right now I am using a set of D-Link NIC's and I am just wondering- what works best?
- Dommer
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Intel
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Is there ONE certain NIC anyone can tell me would work without fail.
No, not even Intel. Newer Intel NICs might not work with older software. The driver for the Intel fxp family has been known to suffer regressions such as not work with a particular family member.
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I think most people would recommend Intel NICs. However nothing is guaranteed 100% ;)
Steve
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You can start by looking at the Intel cards supported by e1000
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/e1000/README?rev=1.1.6.3;content-type=text%2Fplain
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There are two issues, one is the FreeBSD driver and the other is the hardware or hardware's firmware.
cmb points out our hallmark of stability, the Intel 82574L, in some newer implementations can be problematic and in some cases like the Intel 82579LM are not even supported.
Considering the differences in Intel's ethernet chips the i350 and FreeBSD's igb driver are a safe bet mainly because of all the pros scrutinizing its performance. Most of the advantages of this chip are its tagging rings to avoid promiscuous mode's high interrupt rate. (mainly for esx and crossbow networking) I'm not sure it helps pfSense users all that much.
Realtek makes low end ethernet chips, and in some of their early silicon, had outright flaws, but I've been using their recent 8111E design supporting
Hardware Checksum Offloading
Hardware TCP Segmentation Offloading
Hardware Large Receive Offloading
No Jumbo frameswith good luck so far. YMMV.
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Some links to Intel and Realtek ethernet chip differences.
Intel 82574L Single Port GbE Controller MAC/PHY
PCI Express v1.1 x1
2 Tx and 2 Rx queues
TCP segmentation offload
TCP, UDP, IPv4 checksum offload
interrupt moderation
VLAN support
9k jumbo frames
RSS
MSI
MSI-XIntel I350AM Dual or Quad Port GbE Controller MAC/PHY/SerDes/SGMII
PCI Express* v2.1 (5.0 GT/s & 2.5 GT/s) x4/x2/x1
8 Tx and 8 Rx queues per port
Receive Side Scaling (RSS)
Message Signal Interrupt Extension (MSI-X)
UDP, TCP and IP checksum offloads
UDP and TCP Transmit Segmentation Offload (TSO)
SCTP receive and transmit checksum offloads
stateless offloads (header splitting)
jumbo frames (9.5k)
Intel
VT-c (VMDq, SR-IOV)
IEEE 1588 (time sync) / 802.1ASRealtek RTL8111C
Integrated 10/100/1000 transceiver
Auto-Negotiation with Next Page capability
Supports PCI Express
1.1
Supports pair swap/polarity/skew correction
Crossover Detection & & Auto-Correction
Wake-on-LAN and remote wake-up support
Microsoft NDIS5, NDIS6 Checksum Offload (IPv4, IPv6, TCP, UDP) and Segmentation Task-offload (Large send and Giant send) support
Supports Full Duplex flow control (IEEE 802.3x)
Fully compliant with IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3ab
Supports IEEE 802.1P Layer 2 Priority Encoding
Supports IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging
Serial EEPROM
Transmit/Receive on-chip buffer support
Supports power down/link down power saving
Supports PCI MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt) and MSI-X
Supports Receive-Side Scaling (RSS)
Embeds an adaptive equalizer in PCI express PHY (PCB traces to reach 40 inches)Realtek RTL8111E
Integrated 10/100/1000 transceiver
Auto-Negotiation with Next Page capability
Supports PCI Express 1.1
Supports pair swap/polarity/skew correction
Crossover Detection & Auto-Correction
Wake-on-LAN and remote wake-up support
Microsoft NDIS5, NDIS6 Checksum Offload (IPv4, IPv6, TCP, UDP) and Segmentation Task-offload (Large send v1 and Large send v2) support
Supports Full Duplex flow control (IEEE 802.3x)
Supports jumbo frame to 9K bytes
Fully compliant with IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3ab
Supports IEEE 802.1P Layer 2 Priority Encoding
Supports IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging
Supports IEEE 802.3az Draft 3.0 (EEE)
Embedded OTP memory can replace the external EEPROM
Serial EEPROM
Transmit/Receive on-chip buffer support
Supports power down/link down power saving
Built-in switching regulator
Supports PCI MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt) and MSI-X
Supports quad core Receive-Side Scaling (RSS)
Supports Alert Standard Format 2.0 (ASF2.0)
Supports Protocol Offload (ARP & NS)
Supports Customized LEDs
Supports 1-Lane 2.5Gbps PCI Express Bus
Supports hardware ECC (Error Correction Code) function
Supports hardware CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) function -
Personally I've tried only Realtek 8139 chipsets and Intel ones.
8139 is hit and miss. It was stable for 15Mbps in my testing and when it gets over 20Mbps in my system Pfsense crashes.
Intel is my preferred choice of network cards now, even the super old ones like Intel 82550, 82558, 82559 @ 6-7 each. You can also opt for the gigibit Intels for about 10 bucks a pop on ebay brand new.
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our preferred choice in Intel. its been rock solid for us in the Enterprise enviroment.
but YMMV -
I haven't seen many intels that aren't supported in Freebsd 8.1 other than some of the ultra new onboard chipsets (like the 82579). Personally I'd still rather buy a box with an integrated intel that isn't currently supported than an integrated anything else that is currently supported, except perhaps for broadcom. Broadcom does make some nicer chipsets, although they also make some lower end stuff.
