Intermittent network issues with Freebsd 6.2

[Greg Barniskis]

Vivek Khera wrote:

> On our PE800, I had to disable the bge on BIOS and plug in an em-based 
> NIC card.  Made a world of difference in system stability and 
> performance -- it is actually usable now :-)

On our Dell PE2950 units, we had to do the same thing (disable and 
replace the Broadcom interfaces), and that was running Windows 
Server 2k3. The problem really seems to be flakiness of the chips or 
firmware, not necessarily flakiness in the drivers for FreeBSD. 
Maybe it's both, I don't know.

My point is that Broadcom cards have had some serious problems on 
other platforms too, and not just recently. Other NIC brands have 
never given us nearly as much trouble.


-- 
Greg Barniskis, Computer Systems Integrator
South Central Library System (SCLS)
Library Interchange Network (LINK)
<gregb at scls.lib.wi.us>, (608) 266-6348