NIC suggestions wanted
- Thread starter Shenfu
- Start date
Terry Kennedy
Regular Contributor
Intel cards are widely available and have good driver support. If you see an Intel card for sale, you can check on intel.com to make sure it is a current product (not discontinued) and that it supports jumbo frames.
Broadcom cards probably have the next best level of driver support, but are a lot less common as add-on cards (the chips often are used directly on motherboards). There are a couple families of Broadcom chips, and not all of the chips in each family support jumbo frames. The Broadcom web site is a lot less oriented toward end users, and info on chip / card capabilities is harder to find than for the Intel cards.
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
Intel Gigabit CT card. Very cheap, very good. I am running 4 of them and have a spare laying around somewhere. Never had an issue with them.
Doesn't apply to you, but Intel EOL it in terms of support with Windows 8.1. The driver Intel/MS supplies auto installs with the card and works very well, but the Intel networking tool kit won't install properly without some monkeying, even though it WORKS with the cards, Intel doesn't officially support it anymore (you have to download the one for Windows 8 and install it, but it works great under 8.1).
That of course doesn't apply to unix based OSs, but AFAIK lots of driver support for Debian and deffinitely for Ubuntu.
Supports up to 9k jumbo.
Doesn't apply to you, but Intel EOL it in terms of support with Windows 8.1. The driver Intel/MS supplies auto installs with the card and works very well, but the Intel networking tool kit won't install properly without some monkeying, even though it WORKS with the cards, Intel doesn't officially support it anymore (you have to download the one for Windows 8 and install it, but it works great under 8.1).
That of course doesn't apply to unix based OSs, but AFAIK lots of driver support for Debian and deffinitely for Ubuntu.
Supports up to 9k jumbo.
Last edited:
Thanks for the reply. There looks to be a good selection of model numbers for the Intel gigabit CT card. Are they all the same, or is there one in particular I should aim to get? Will this card work with all brands of router, or is it picky?
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
Wide compatibility. If you are mostly looking at Linux support, the Intel Gigabit CT card. Its what I have in my server and desktop (2 each) and works great The only iffy thing is that Intel yanked Windows 8.1 support past the initial driver release. Its EOL as near as I can tell, though I think Intel still makes the cards...
Plenty of past and current Linux support on it and it'll run under Windows 8.1 and everything back through XP fine though.
As for routers...uhh, the card you are running generally isn't going to have any router or switch issues, so long as it is running the same protocol. IE, 1000base-tx, which all gigabit capable network interface cards do, unless you are looking at fiber.
Plenty of past and current Linux support on it and it'll run under Windows 8.1 and everything back through XP fine though.
As for routers...uhh, the card you are running generally isn't going to have any router or switch issues, so long as it is running the same protocol. IE, 1000base-tx, which all gigabit capable network interface cards do, unless you are looking at fiber.
M
microchip
Guest
Indeed. Realtek and Ralink offer just the basics so if you don't need anything else, you can't beat them on price. From personal experience, I've been using Realtek NICs for years and never had issues with them on Linux. Now I'm on a Broadcom soldered on the mobo and had to turn TSO off or else it crashes the tg3 driver when transferring at high speeds
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
Seriously, I hear SOOOOOO many Broadcom issues, both on the wired and wireless side of things (I have issues with a wireless adapter from Broadcom). I have yet to figure out why the hell they are so popular. Maybe price?
M
microchip
Guest
The hardware from Broadcom is fine. It's the software side of things that sucks (sometimes?)
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
Yeah, mine seems to have incredible driver issues. Though, it could well be an issue on the hardware end of things too...but...yeah, just, wow.
Terry Kennedy
Regular Contributor
Intel understands that end users buy their cards and need drivers and support. Broadcom is really, really geared to the OEM market and the drivers on their site are simply there so they don't have to handle unwanted support calls from end users.
The Broadcom chips are actually kind of interesting - they're complete microcontrollers and how they operate is controlled by firmware. In fact, the Broadcom diagnostics download into the microcontroller memory and run from there, directly checking the hardware. That means that most bugs can be fixed with new firmware and/or drivers.
Your best bet is determining which Broadcom chip or family you have, then looking on manufacturer web sites (for example, Dell) for the latest firmware and drivers for that chip / family.
M
microchip
Guest
Thanks for the info. The Broadcom firmware is shipped with my kernel. It is located in /lib/firmware/tigon and in there I can find 3 firmware files (tg3.bin, tg3_tso.bin and tg3_tso5.bin). I do not know if it/they get loaded as there's nothing in dmesg. I just upgraded last night to 3.12.15 kernel but I'm reluctant in turning TSO on. I will poke at the Broadcom site to see if they have newer firmware.
As for looking at manufacturer's site. I assembled my computer myself. It uses an ASRock mobo but on their site they only offer BIOS firmware. I haven't seen any firmware for the NIC
Terry Kennedy
Regular Contributor
That's really bizarre. I don't use Linux, but on FreeBSD (for example), the driver is really just the driver, not driver + firmware. It would be impossible to netboot a box if a driver had to be loaded first to feed firmware to the card.
You misunderstood me. I meant that Broadcom doesn't officially provide support to end users, only to OEMs. Find an OEM system that uses the same chip as your system, and download the driver and firmware update utility from there. For example, go here, select RHEL6 and expand the Network section, and you will find:
Broadcom NetXtreme I and II Network Device Firmware 7.8.0 View details
Network | Release date 3/26/2014 | Last Updated 3/26/2014 | Recommended
Broadcom Linux RPM packaged driver updates for NetXtreme I and NetXtreme II Ethernet adapters for the 18.2.2 update. View details
Network | Release date 3/26/2014 | Last Updated 3/26/2014 | Optional
Note that Dell firmware update packages are somewhat picky and usually won't install out-of-the-box on non-Dell systems. Unpacking the update package and looking at the shell scripts will usually show you how to override those checks (at your own risk, of course).
While you can sometimes get out-of-date firmware on OEM sites, downloading the release notes for that Dell firmware reveals:
Broadcom (R) Corporation
Broadcom Ethernet Software Kit
RELEASE T7.8c.4.3 Gold
(Wednesday, February 5, 2014)
Which is a good deal newer than what you can find on the Broadcom site,
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
That is the route I've taken before with Broadcom products is finding another device that uses the same hardware and grabbed a driver package for that device to install on my system.
Same thing often with Marvell and often times Atheros products.
Realtek at least seems to have a lot of their stuff on their website. I can't comment on Ralink as I've never owned a Ralink based product.
Same thing often with Marvell and often times Atheros products.
Realtek at least seems to have a lot of their stuff on their website. I can't comment on Ralink as I've never owned a Ralink based product.
Thanks for the info. Your last sentence concerns me a bit, as I plan to gradually phase out XP Pro over the next couple years, for Linux...so "IE" would be replaced by a Linux browser (probably not Firefox). All the routers I'm considering are "1000base-tx", but will no IE be a future problem? If so, what can I do to mitigate?
azazel1024
Very Senior Member
IE in this case I meant i.e. = Id Est, That is.
Not Internet Explorer. Sorry for the confusion.
Not Internet Explorer. Sorry for the confusion.
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