Nics and their relative value

[Alex Snow]

The card in this box right now is a tulip base linksys lne100tx card.  They
run around $20.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry at gotss.net>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 9:39 AM
Subject: Nics and their relative value


> You are perhapse using these cards in low usage conditions or do not use
> multicast.
> The rtl8139 a/b/c  is a low cost connectivity solution for 100 megabit
networks.
> It is a cheap chip and for that reason has appeared on many oem designs
and cards.
> It has a 64-slot multicast filter that takes the intermediate result after
crc and uses
> that as a hash into a table. It works well enough
> but does not filter anywhere as well as the tulip or 3com designs.
> Although the 8139 chips are a pci-bus master, I have noticed negative
> performance situations where mp3s broke up when copying large amounts over
> a network under Windows.
> Upgrading drivers helped aleviate the problem but did not fix it and
system performance
> was far better with the 3com 3c9x cards in them.
>
> Older machines can have problems with the rtl parts, especially
> if they do not support apm correctly. The 8139 chip goes to sleep and
> crashes the box.
> Replace the card with an rtl8029 or a tulip or a 3com which doesn't insist
on
> doing PCI pwer management and the problem goes away.
>
> On your home network copying a few files around at 10 megabit or under low
load
> the cards might seem fine, but don't put them in a file server
> or where performance is critical.
> Cards that cost $10-$20US are not and never will be as higher performing
as cards
> that cost $50-$100.
> Regarding the ne2000; now there was a completely cheap and
> nasty chip design that was adopted by manifacturers because it
> was associated with novell. National Semiconductors
> took the simplest ethernet chip design and put out the 8390 chip.
> It was cheap, it worked and it was clonable. It wasn't high performance,
> it wasn't bug free and it wasn't the fastest card ont he block
> either.
> If you intend low use or only a few hundred megs across your network per
day,
> a realtek or ne2000 might suit you fine; but for the serious
> network card purchaser, get n intel card or tulip-based
> design.
> Don't get me started on tranceiver failure. At $1 I expect you can
tolerate some of these though;
> just get lots of cards.
> Never forget:
> Good, fast, cheap; pick two.
> On Sun, May 19, 2002 at 08:53:02AM -0400, Alex Snow wrote:
> > I will be ordering a few of those cards, and if they don't work in my
linux
> > box like I think they will, I'll put them in my winblows machine.  I
have
> > used a d-link dfe538 card, with no problems till it got hit by lightning
> > last summer.  I have also used some 3com cards like the 3c9 series, and
a
> > few etherlink 3s.  I have not seen much of a difference.
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Ed Barnes" <edbarnes at anomaly.2y.net>
> > To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> > Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 3:12 AM
> > Subject: Re: nic at real cheap price
> >
> >
> > > Hi folks, I have to join on this thread in defense of Rol.
> > > Those Realtech's work with kernel 2.4 and they worked with 2.2 as well
> > > according to documentation.
> > > I say that they worked according to docs with 2.2 because my first
work
> > > with Linux was recently so it was 2.4.
>
> --
> Kerry Hoath:  kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or
kerry at gotss.spice.net.au
> ICQ: 8226547 msn: kerry at gotss.net Yahoo: kerryhoath at yahoo.com.au
>
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