Multiport NICs - VLAN and Polling Support?

[Drew Linsalata]

Danial Thom writes: 

> Intel makes a 4 port em card, so what is so hard
> about finding it, as every major distributor
> carries it?

Intel makes lots of cards, with lots of different chipset variants.  It's 
not a stretch to ask the community about experiences with particular cards 
that work correctly with the em driver. 

> 
> Why anyone would be so clueless as to use polling
> with an em card is beyond the scope of this
> discussion, but I have to admit it has great
> entertainment value!

Great.  There's one in every crowd. 

I guess I can humor you, though.  em is listed as a driver that supports 
polling, which is widely regarded as a good thing from a performance 
standpoint.  It happens to be one of only two drivers under 4.11 that 
support BOTH polling and hardware VLAN (at least according to the polling 
and vlan man pages).  Tell me, oh mighty terminal jockey, why is polling 
with an em card classified as an endeavor for the clueless? 

Drew Linsalata
The Gotham Bus Company, Inc.
Dedicated Servers and Colocation
Long Island, New York
http://www.gothambus.com