FBSD 1GBit router?

[Ingo Flaschberger]

Dear Barney,

>> PCIe cards are 1x because the chips are all wired for
>> 1x. Intel has a marketing plan. Its not to use low-end
>> chips for high-end operations. Intel is just going to
>> cannibalized their own business by putting out higher
>> performance low-end chips.
>
> really?
> the 1 port server chip use only 1 lane
> the 2 port server chip use only

sorry, forgotten to finish this part:
The 1 and 2 port intel server gbit chipset have a 4x lanes pci-e 
conection.

The 1 port card only use 1x lane.
The 2 port card use 4x lanes.

The 4 port card use 4x lanes.


pci-e bus speeds:
http://www.s-t-e.de/index.html?http%3A//www.s-t-e.de/content/Articles/Articles_08b.html
(sorry, only in german)

http://www.s-t-e.de/content/Articles/images/Articles_08/PCIe_EffVSPay_f24_sml.gif
there you see the efficency with different payloads.
minimal ethernet packet size of 64 byte has a efficency of 0.4

with small packets you will be able to achieve 800mbits, whats not bad.
perhaps with the 2 port-cards it would be better, but I think, the system 
io of the processor will start limiting.

Kind regards,
 	Ingo Flaschberger