ditto .. Everone *says* they have world class 10/100 cards, but how many really talk to each other at that speed reliably ? When I am doing an daily backup transfers the line runs ~ 85-90 MB for an hour, I've had too many cards drop down to 10 or half duplex (eh!) or re-autonegotiate every couple of minutes or so. Some cards just don't do 100 or f/d at all with certain devices on the other end.
Intel nics are ok; they are scads better than realtek (don't get me started on those) linksys or dlink cheapies. 3coms will save you some extra hair pulling when your 100MB or 1000MB network is suddenly performing like a 10/half-duplex network running a windows server. 3com has some low-ends; I'd stay away from those too. I would stick with 905B or above. What are peoples experiences with switches ? For the office where the co. pays, I would have to recommend cisco for the same reasons. But for the soho or home network, cisco is not cost feasible. How well do small switches scale ? How many devices/traffic to saturate ? Jason Harris -----Original Message----- From: John Cichy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 8:41 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: 100mbit nic: intel or 3com? Victor, IMHO (and this might get me flamed), 3com. I have tried a lot of other cards and I have found that 3com's are well supported (by both linux and doze) and just seem to keep running. 3com's are usually more expensive then the others, but I feel the extra cost is worth having less aggravation. John On Friday 01 February 2002 11:40, Victor Julien wrote: > Hi, > > I want to build a debian based router/gateway/fileserver/mailserver for a > home network with 12 clients. It will be quite low budget as the server is > a Pentium 166Mhz. I want the network to be 100mbit fullduplex, so I want to > buy a Nic for the server. Which one is best for maximum performance and > stability? Intel, 3com, SMC or just a cheap Realtek? I think the nic should > be using the cpu as little as possible... > > Thanks for your advice, > > Victor Julien
