What's everybody's favorite 10/100 NIC?

[grg22 at ai.mit.edu (Greg Galperin)]

Keller, Tim wrote:
> My personal favorites have been so far...
> 
> 3com 905tx (Vortex/Boomerang)
> 
> I've also had great luck with Intel Pro/100 cards.


I'm a fan of the 3com; they've generically been better than anything
else I've tried.  Software support for them seems good and ubiquitous,
and they pretty much just work.


I'm very much NOT a fan of the eepro100 -- apparently there's some
sort of incompatibility with NetApps.  When it's "working" I get
literally 10% of the nfs bandwidth that I get with 3coms; when it's
not working, well, I get 0% plus as a bonus the standard "freeze the
whole machine for a couple minutes because nfs is unhappy" behavior.
Don't know if it's the linux driver or the card that's the culprit (or
the netapp, though again the 3com does just fine so the eepro should
be able to also).

Of course, most people don't have NetApps, so they won't run into this
specific problem.  Maybe this eepro flaw is strictly NetApp-specific,
or maybe there's other hardware the eepro won't work with.  Maybe
there's hardware the 3com won't work with, but I haven't enocountered
it.  All I know is that I'll go to nearly any length to use a 3com
instead of an eepro.

--grg