Intel PRO/10GbE CX4? General 10Gb tips?

[Alan Amesbury]

On June 1, 2007, Kip Macy wrote:

> I'm talking about what is in the tree in the moment. I'll have to
> withhold judgement on ix until we can actually use it. With luck he'll
> have time to adapt it to FreeBSD. There are a number of other 10GigE
> drivers cards that are "supported" by FreeBSD, but they take the linux
> shim approach and tend to be 3x slower.

Sounds like the Intel hardware is the way to go, then.  Performance is 
absolutely key (else why spend the money for 10Gb hardware, right?), so 
a performance hit of more than 1-2% isn't going to be acceptable.  I'd 
be willing to consider vendors who provided native FreeBSD blobs but, 
where possible and feasible, I tend to give preference to those who 
release specs and driver source openly.

That said, if anyone knows of a 10Gb card that's a) FreeBSD friendly, 
and b) PCIe 8-lane (since I don't think PCI-X can't keep up with a 
saturated 10Gb link), I'd appreciate pointers.

Thanks again to those who responded... and thanks in advance to those 
who join in on this thread later.  :-)


-- 
Alan Amesbury
OIT Security and Assurance
University of Minnesota