I was recently bit by some reliability problems with a late-model Quad GigE Intel NIC, and I'm looking for a replacement. (Details below if you're interested in the problems.)
So I'm looking for a gigabit Ethernet NIC that has good OpenBSD compatibility and model stability. Do you have a favorite? You're welcome to respond off-list if you like, I'll happily summarize back to the list. Quad port would be ideal, I'll take dual and settle on single-port if I have to. PCIe. I need autonegotiation on speed and duplex, and 802.1q VLAN support. It will be used for an OpenBSD firewall (currently 4.6), PF, NAT. Current hardware is Dell R200. The built-in BGE0 and BGE1 seem to work well, this is to add additional Ethernet ports. By "model stability", I mean I'm seeking a brand that I can have some assurance will be around for a couple of years, and won't switch chipsets on the same model number. Problems with the Intel card: The most obvious symptom is that some ports will not go to 1000baseT. You can see someone else describing my symptoms here: http://www.pubbs.net/openbsd/200911/33252/ I cannot get em1 and em3 to go higher than 100baseTX. If I force it to 1000, I lose connection. HP Procurve 5406ZL switch. I have also had a few kernel panics that mentioned pf. I'm assuming its related to the card, but that's a big assumption on my part. The card doesn't have a lot of identifying marks. On the backplane metal, it has D61627-003. It was purchased from Dell with the R200s. I have one pulled out, another is in a running machine. If I can post some useful info, let me know. If I'm correct that the NIC is the source of my trouble, then my priority isn't getting it to work, but replacing it. Happy to do some tests if desired, though. If one of the Intel NIC driver developers wants this NIC, let me know where to ship it. Ryan
