[geeks] WANTED: gigE controller for Solaris x86

[Shannon Hendrix]

Since my Dell T105 cannot do jumbo frames, I'm looking for opinions on  
everyone's favorite gigE controller that has jumbo frame support and  
excellent Solaris drivers.

I was originally planning to add one to my T105 to give it two network  
links anyway, though I was hoping to only have to pay for a single  
port card.

The cheapest dual gigE card I see from Intel with jumbo frame support  
is $140.

That seems to be the safest bet from everything I've read, and I  
almost always use Intel ethernet when I can.

However, $140 is a lot more than I had planned to spend, so I wouldn't  
mind hearing some positive experience with non-Intel gigE cards since  
they can be found cheaper, or just good leads on cheap Intel cards.

At newegg.com the desktop version of their single-port gigE PCIe cards  
is $40, the server version is $80, but they appear to be identical  
outside of the name, and one feature: load balancing.

http://tinyurl.com/6h7sca

All three use the same chipset and look identical, but the server  
version lists "load balancing" as a feature that let's the card spread  
its load among multiple CPUs.

Does anyone know if that really helps much?  Is it worth another $40?




-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com