AFAIK as 100 mbit or less it maters very little for the hardware. Quality of
the drivers can make a big difference though.
3com has some cards that have hardware checksumming which is nice but not
really a big deal. Not sure which other cards have this feature.
At Gigabit the legacy ethernet/tcpip stack is ummm suboptimal, so the design
of the card can make a BIG difference, but just about any 10/100 mbit
card should be just fine, even for a server.
I've seen just bout anything come within a few percent of optimal, i.e.
saturating the network, even crappy $10 ISA ne2000 clones. Keep in
mind I'm refering to linux, I've seen windows often get less then 10%
utilization, especially over window fileshares.
Personally my favorite is the netgear cards that you can get a box of
10 for under $200 ish. Use the tulip driver which has been good/stable
for years.
So as a rule of thumb, unless it's gigabit it doesn't matter.
On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 09:40:33PM -0600, Jay Strauss wrote:
> I was just at Microcenter picking up network cards. Cards with the rtl8139
> chip ranged from
> $9.75 (the ones I bought) to about $35. Is there any difference? Then
> there where cards (linksys)
> that used the tulip driver that ran from 25 - 45. Then there are other
> cards 3com, Intel, etc.. I don't know what chip and/or driver they use.
>
> Is there noticeable difference between the chips/drivers, in speed,
> compatibility, dependability?
>
> Jay Strauss
> Database Architect
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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