What's PCI Ethernet Card best for heavy load

[dduck313]

I'd like to build a Main Proxy Server having a heavy load. I've tried Realtek, SiS, ADMTek, and VIA and it's result a really bad response and throughput (less than 40mbps). Any suggestion of PCI Ethernet Card to use with Star-OS? Note that my mainboard only supported 32-bit PCI Card.

[lonnie]

We use only Realtek 8139 Ethernet cards and even on a slow 500 MHz machine they can attain the full 100 mbps. You must have issues with IRQ sharing. Make sure to turn off audio, USB and other unused peripherals in the BIOS.

[tog]

I don't know about StarOS/Linux specifically in terms of the quality of any particular drivers, but in terms of the quality of the NICs, I wouldn't use any of the NICs you just mentioned for a server if I had a choice.

Intel Etherexpress Pro has always been my favorite NIC, the Linux and *BSD drivers have always been top notch. You can find older versions of that NIC around for just a few dollars per card, any old version has worked perfectly for me, even the really aged i82557. I bought a stack of i82558 NICs for $5/ea a couple years ago and I use them whenever I need a NIC for anything.

Many people also swear by 3com NICs, but I definitely do not like them very much, I sometimes tend to swear at them instead of swear by them.

I have always considered Realtek wireless and ethernet chipsets badly-documented tinker toys for non-critical purposes such as windows desktops. The poor/incorrect chipset documentation and unexpected behavior has often ensured that any driver that Realtek themselves did not write (any driver that isn't for Windows) has been full of nasty bugs.

Linux and *BSD have gotten their realtek drivers stable and largely bug-free by now, but they still make me nervous.