luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON
 ·surpasshosting
 ·Rogers Hi-Speed
| pfsense recommended NIC Hi everyone,
on the weekend I am going to go out and buy 3 network cards and build me a router using some hardware that I have at home (older athlon)
I read the PFsense hardware page and it supports a LOT of network cards.
what are you all running?
this will be a dual wan router using 8/1 connections so nothing super crazy or special but quite a few packets in and out.
I was thinking some dlink DFE530's or Intel pro/100's
no need for Gigabit since the connection is 8/1.
Any other hints/tips/recommendations?
have a great day.
Luma | |
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leibold
Premium,MVM
join:2002-07-09
Sunnyvale, CA
clubs: 
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC If those two are your only choices, the Intel pro/100's are in my opinion the better choice.
If it were me however I would use a single 4-port DFE-570TX (uses Digital/Intel Tulip chips which I prefer for 10/100 NICs) when building a router.
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON
·surpasshosting
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC the DFE-570TX is a nice card but with a ~250$ price tag it would be a bit difficult to convince the wife :P
I am just looking for something half decent, it does not have to be server class top of the line. as long as it is pretty good and reliable and lasts a year or 2.
Thanks for the opignon though that is a nice card.
Luma | |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC I would get em cards (Intel 10/100/1000). They are excellent and well supported. If you're on a budget, get Intel 10/100 cards. But if you want to plan ahead if/when you'll want gigE on the LAN side, look at em cards.
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON
·surpasshosting
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC ya I was looking at some EM cards but I don't see the point in spending the extra few dollars.
I have gigabit at home but this will be a router that will route 16megabits of data maximum. the machine won't be used for anything else except as a router. Unless rogers really really upgrades my connection :P
Luma | |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC Just figured if you wound up using it as a file server later on, you'd save yourself from having to buy a gigE card then. But fxp (Intel 10/100) should be fine in the near term. 
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE | Re: pfsense recommended NIC I have the Desktop adapters I think, and they perform great. But, I'm a cheap ass
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC Hrm the prices are more expensive than I remember paying, so perhaps these cards are better than what I have. But here's what I'd recommend from newegg:
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···33106123
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON | Re: pfsense recommended NIC I can live with 33 dollars compared to the lovely DFE570 (which would be nice to have though!)
I will talk to my computer guy in town and see if I can get a deal (need 3 after all)
Luma | |
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Cabal
Premium
join:2007-01-21
Boston, MA
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC I recommend the $33 Intel 1000GT (em) cards, I've bought a bunch recently and their performance and support is great. The driver is also regularly updated and the maintainer is an Intel employee and a mailing list regular.
I've been happy with the 3com 905-series (xl) cards in the past, but had some problems with watchdog timeouts under recent 6.x release of FreeBSD with otherwise good hardware (no connection problems, just daily log spam).
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON | Re: pfsense recommended NIC Thanks Cabal,
Appreciate the info!
I think I am going to go for the intel a lot of folks seem to really like them.
Luma | |
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ
·Optimum Online
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC said by luma  :I think I am going to go for the intel a lot of folks seem to really like them. The fxps are, and as long as I've been using FBSD (2.1.6), have been rock-solid. Agreed that that rls are 'teh suck'. The other cheapies are good for an application like this, but under real load the hardware is really lacking.
There's some very interesting reading in many of the manpages for the cheap-o chipsets. | |
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ
·Optimum Online
| FreeBSD 6.x (which pfsense is based on) supports pretty much all of the $15 Staples ethernet cards. My box has a dc(4), xl(4) and an sis(4). Other than the 3com, those are all just $10-$15 cheapies.
Hardware list is here:
»www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/ha···ETHERNET | |
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON
·surpasshosting
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC Sporkme thanks for the reply.
as I said in my main post I did take a look at the Freebsd hardware page but because it support sooo many cards I wanted to know what people are running.
thanks for letting me know that you run the dc/xl and sis without problem. will look into those.
Luma | |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| Oh, I'd also recommend against rl cards, if you don't go with em or dc.
According to the rl man page, that means avoiding these cards:
quote:
o Accton ``Cheetah'' EN1207D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139 clone)
o Allied Telesyn AT2550
o Allied Telesyn AT2500TX
o Belkin F5D5000
o BUFFALO (Melco INC.) LPC-CB-CLX (CardBus)
o Compaq HNE-300
o CompUSA no-name 10/100 PCI Ethernet NIC
o Corega FEther CB-TXD
o Corega FEtherII CB-TXD
o D-Link DFE-528TX
o D-Link DFE-530TX+
o D-Link DFE-538TX
o D-Link DFE-690TXD
o Edimax EP-4103DL CardBus
o Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI
o Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI
o Genius GF100TXR
o GigaFast Ethernet EE100-AXP
o KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet
o LevelOne FPC-0106TX
o Longshine LCS-8038TX-R
o NDC Communications NE100TX-E
o Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100
o Nortel Networks 10/100BaseTX
o OvisLink LEF-8129TX
o OvisLink LEF-8139TX
o Peppercon AG ROL-F
o Planex FNW-3800-TX
o SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX
o SOHO (PRAGMATIC) UE-1211C
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Aidens Daddy
join:2006-01-30
Tampa, FL | I use Intel, 3com 905's and I think I have an Netgear FA311 in there. | |
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BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| I used old rev netgear fa311's I have a total of 2 lan adapters that one incoming is my comcast cable the other is out to my switch.
With 4 wireless cards each connected to my neighbors (1 t-1 2 cable , 1 sprint evdo card) and even with powerboost and a download accelerator I never hit the full 100 mbit speeds of the nic's.
Id go 100 mbit to keep down costs.
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DaSneaky1D
one wall to block them all
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou | Curious, what sort of switch are you using? | |
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luma
Premium
join:2004-08-17
Ottawa, ON
·surpasshosting
·Rogers Hi-Speed
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC thanks everyone,
I pretty much made my decision to go with the pro/1000 from intel at 33dollars.
I won't bother going with 100 because it is almost the same price.
DaSneaky1D I have a netgear router with 4x gigabit ports and a SMC switch with jumboframe (not using the jumboframe) that has 5x gigabit switches. all my computers have gigabit except for one or 2 which are on a 10/100 dlink switch.
Luma | |
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ddrmanxbxfr
join:2007-05-10
Quebec
 ·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | I've used 3x Dlink DFE 530TX here working nice and an 24 ports 10/100 switch on them.
First card : Internet Modem adsl
2nd Card : to my wifi AP
3rd Card : To my switch
getting around 9 mbps on local transfer using the switch sometimes 11 mbps depending on the pc used.
The server was an Pentium 2 350 Mhz with 512 Meg of ram and 6 gig of scsi hard drive 15K Rpm | |
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sporkme
drop the crantini and move it, sister
Premium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ | Re: pfsense recommended NIC Don't quote me on this, but you might want to look at using the hard drive as I *think* that some of the add-on packages and long-term stats are not available on the flash version of pfsense. | |
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Julianweber
@comcast.net
| Re: pfsense recommended NIC Yes it will work but I believe they made the embedded version specifically so that it would not make frequent writes to the card and cause early failure. I have heard reports of around a year before failure using non embedded versions on compact flash. Do a Google search and see for your yourself, but it is not generally recommended. | |
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