quad port fast ethernet card recommendations

[Jon Simola]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 12:18:05 -0500, Michael W. Oliver
<michael at gargantuan.com> wrote:
> subject sums it up.  will be used in small firewall boxes with WAN, LAN,
> DMZ, and WLAN (via x-over to AP) connections.  older hardware, so
> please, no fancy super-duper mega-bandwidth PCI cards that I won't have
> slots for.  I only have one PCI slot to play with, else I would use
> single-port cards.  the case is kinda small, too, so I don't think that
> full-length cards will fit.  Yeah, I know... not asking for much.  :)
> 
> what do you recommend?

Not a recommendation: D-Link DFE-580TX
For $100CAD, it's a quad ste() card and didn't wow me with performace.
I ran into a few issues related to trying to burst 30Mbps over it's
PCI bridge and the motherboard's PCI bridge (which I know is pushing a
standard PCI implementation).

My next suggestion (haven't actually used one but have heard great
things about them) for a plain, functional quad NIC would be Soekris
Engineering's lan1641, for $89USD http://www.soekris.com/

You may even want to investigate their boards, I've been eyeing the
4801 + 1621 bundle for $309USD, which gets you 5 ethernet interfaces
on a bootable board in a case.