[130535] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Anyone can share the Network card experience
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Tracy)
Tue Oct 5 11:04:51 2010
From: Chris Tracy <ctracy@es.net>
In-Reply-To: <2b4a1576$53008cec$731c06c5$@com>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2010 11:02:47 -0400
To: nick@brevardwireless.com
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
>> Anyone can share the Network card experience
>> ls onborad PCI Expresscard better or Plug in slot PCI Express card =
good?
>> How are their performance in Gig transfer rate?
> IMHO, Nothing beats a good intel NIC.
> I'm a big fan of the intel pro/1000GT.
> In terms of performance, I think it is more determined by the card =
chipset.
The e1000 & e1000e linux driver docs include READMEs which detail some =
of the diffs between the various chipsets used by these NICs:
=
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=3DY&DwnldID=3D9180&ke=
yword=3De1000&lang=3Deng
=
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=3DY&DwnldID=3D15817&k=
eyword=3De1000e&lang=3Deng
Some support jumbo frames, some do not. I've seen some server =
motherboards come with two different on-board 8257x chipsets on the same =
board -- one that supports jumbo and one that does not (yikes!)
The driver can make a huge difference in performance. If your driver =
sucks, don't expect performance to be much better. e1000/e1000e in =
Linux has a lot of tweakables, and getting these running at line-rate in =
a LAN is not that difficult. You motherboard manual (bus topology) and =
output of 'lspci -tv' can help you determine the best PCI slot to stick =
the card into to avoid contention. Some cards support checksum =
offloading, 'ethtool -S' can often tell you whether that's working or =
not, etc.
-Chris
--
Chris Tracy <ctracy@es.net>
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
