Hardware recommendation: NIC

po0k

I'm building a server soon and I was wondering would I be better off going for two 3Com905C-TX-Ms (€30 each) or try and find a 4-port 100MBit PCI card that would allow an aggregated 400MBit FD link to the switch?
I'm not too sure how much these cost, I'd imagine around the €130-150 mark.
it's for an x86 server which will probaly be running Debian or RedHat.

Capt'n Midnight

You can get gigabit cards from €25 or ~€50 if you get a good brand - have a look at komplett website - both come with linux drivers.

po0k

Don't have Gigabit switches

The motherboard I'm looking at has an onboard NIC, but I doubt it's really up to much.
Don't know what the exact chip is.
Motherboard will be an MSI K7D Master-L if I can't find an Asus A7M266-D

Hence why I'm looking at dual or quad cards to setup a trunked connection to the switches (whcih would be trunked together too).

spongebob

Intel Dual Port Pro is a good well supported with rock solid drivers Dual NIC and can be aggregated along with an onboard Intel Nic (if present) to give 300Mbits-ish about €100-120

M

po0k

Will that 3-port aggregation work under linux?
The MSI mobo I'm looking at has an intel onboard NIC.
Not sure what exact chipset or generation, but it'd be about 2 years old anyways.

That would be a nice solutioon alright

spongebob

Note that Port Trunking (at the switch) is called Teaming in Intel and Bonding elsewhere.

Then start here

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonding/

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-006103-prd38.htm

M

po0k

Thanks Muck