On Tue, Aug 16, 2005 at 01:27:21AM +0200, Anders Breindahl wrote: > On Monday 15 August 2005 23:48, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 10:54:40PM +0200, Jan Schledermann wrote: > > > A safe bet is a card with a realtek chip. It works well and is not > > > expensive. > > > > Yeah. It's safe in the same way that a Pinto was safe in a rear end > > collision. Seriously, Realtek are the *cheapest* and *worst* possible > > chips. If you want anything approaching reliable, then don't get them. > > If you want something that will not hog your CPU under heavy load, then > > don't get a realtek. Really, 3COM is the way to go. Failing that, > > maybe Intel, though I am not as familiar with their newer hardware. > > > > -Roberto > > Please educate me: What exactly determines a NIC's reliability? What defines > its effectiveness? >
Among other things, its load on the CPU when under heavy traffic load. Certain cards implement a minimal hardware set and do most of their processing in the driver software. The size of the buffers also plays a role in how heavy loads are handled, e.g., when packets are dropped. -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
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