Good FreeBSD Supported Gigabit Ethernet Card?

[Oliver Hansen]

Steve Bertrand wrote:
> Oliver Hansen wrote:
>   
>> I'm looking to eventually upgrade my home network to all gigabit so I'm
>> going to start by purchasing a few NICs for some old servers I just
>> received. I know there are quite a few supported by FreeBSD6 which I
>> found ( http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET
>> ) but I'm wondering if there is any real benefit in buying a $40 or $50
>> NIC like the Netgear GA311 or just get a $20 NIC like the D-Link
>> DFE-530TX+. The use will probably be a firewall, proxy, file server, and
>> DVR.
>> <http://www.EagleBit.com/Netgear_GA311_Gigabit_PCI_Card_p/eb-400-00357.htm>
>>     
>
> I have a few Netgear GA311's in production, and although I haven't done
> any benchmarking, I know that they work rock solid operating atop the re
> driver in my backup infrastructure:
>
> backup# uname -a
> FreeBSD backup 6.2-RELEASE-p2 FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p2 #0: Mon Mar  5
> 16:57:55 EST 2007
>
> backup# ifconfig
> re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>         options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING>
>
> .... I can't speak of D-Link however. Aside from the NIC's, I have found
> some performance issues with NetGear GigE managed switches though,
> whereas they seem to slowly loose throughput width after a few months
> without a reboot.
>
> Steve
>
>   
Thank you for the info regarding reliability. That is my main concern 
along with price. The only thing I still wonder about is features such 
as Jumbo Frame, 802.1q, and other support. I gather that every device on 
the network needs to support these for them to work generally but are 
any of the features really worth it on a modest home network?

-- 
Oliver Hansen
http://www.oliverhansen.com