Good FreeBSD Supported Gigabit Ethernet Card?

[Preston Hagar]

On 9/14/07, Oliver Hansen <oliver.hansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking to eventually upgrade my home network to all gigabit so I'm
> going to start by purchasing a few NICs for some old servers I just
> received. I know there are quite a few supported by FreeBSD6 which I found
> ( http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET ) but
> I'm wondering if there is any real benefit in buying a $40 or $50 NIC
> like the Netgear GA311 or just get a $20 NIC like the D-Link DFE-530TX+.
> The use will probably be a firewall, proxy, file server, and DVR.
> <http://www.EagleBit.com/Netgear_GA311_Gigabit_PCI_Card_p/eb-400-00357.htm>
>
> --
> Oliver Hansen
> http://www.oliverhansen.com
>
>


As others have stated, Intel's are great.  I would highly recommend
them.  Just as a heads up in case you weren't aware, in your research
and purchase watch out for vendors switching chipsets within card
models.  Linksys is very bad about this.  If I remember correctly,
their most common GigE card has one model number, but 3 versions, all
of which have different chipsets.  As I recall, the 1st version works
well, the second so-so and the third not at all.  To add to the fun,
they no longer print the revision on the outside of the box, the only
way to find out is to open up the package and look at the chip on the
card.  Sorry if I sound a little bitter, I just recently had to
purchase a GigE card for a couple of  OpenBSD servers, needed them
right away, and had to go to several brick and mortar stores asking to
open the packages to make sure cards would work when I got them back
to the office.

Anyway, vendors other than Linksys do this as well, so just keep an
eye out for it.  Usually, no matter what the chipset, Intels seem to
be well supported.  I also had good success with the D-Link DGE-560T
PCI Express card and the DGE-530T PCI card under OpenBSD.

Hope this helps.

Preston