multi-port NIC suggestions?

[Charles Swiger]

On Jul 6, 2005, at 1:13 PM, Greg Barniskis wrote:
> Can anyone suggest (or warn against) any particular NIC make/model  
> that features 2 or 4 NIC ports on a single card, for use with 5.4- 
> STABLE (or even 6.0 since this is a long term project)?
>
> We are interested in prototyping a small footprint router/server  
> device, where the small form factor host chassis will only have a  
> couple of PCI slots, but 4 or more separate LAN interfaces are  
> desired.
>
> Thanks for any information you can provide.\

Sure.  I have several firewall boxes using a 4-port DEC 21x4x PCI  
NIC, which I think were OEM Dell boards, but I'm not 100% certain of  
that memory.  Looks like this (per pciconf -v -l):

pcib2 at pci0:14:0:        class=0x060400 card=0x000000dc  
chip=0x00241011 rev=0x03 hdr=0x01
     vendor   = 'Digital Equipment Corporation'
     device   = '21151/2 PCI to PCI Bridge'
     class    = bridge
     subclass = PCI-PCI
dc0 at pci2:4:0:   class=0x020000 card=0x11101186 chip=0x00191011  
rev=0x41 hdr=0x00
     vendor   = 'Digital Equipment Corporation'
     device   = 'DC21142/3 PCI/CardBus 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Ctlr'
     class    = network
     subclass = ethernet
dc1 at pci2:5:0:   class=0x020000 card=0x11101186 chip=0x00191011  
rev=0x41 hdr=0x00
     vendor   = 'Digital Equipment Corporation'
     device   = 'DC21142/3 PCI/CardBus 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Ctlr'
     class    = network
     subclass = ethernet
dc2 at pci2:6:0:   class=0x020000 card=0x11101186 chip=0x00191011  
rev=0x41 hdr=0x00
     vendor   = 'Digital Equipment Corporation'
     device   = 'DC21142/3 PCI/CardBus 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Ctlr'
     class    = network
     subclass = ethernet
dc3 at pci2:7:0:   class=0x020000 card=0x11101186 chip=0x00191011  
rev=0x41 hdr=0x00
     vendor   = 'Digital Equipment Corporation'
     device   = 'DC21142/3 PCI/CardBus 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Ctlr'
     class    = network
     subclass = ethernet

I've been using them for three or four years now with no problems,  
under FreeBSD 4.x.  I expect they would also work just fine under  
5.x, too.

-- 
-Chuck