Multi-NIC NIC

Are there any Ethernet 100BaseTX NIC's (w/PCI-Interface)
that have more than one RJ45 jack?
Ie. it shall occupy just 1 slot on the mainboard
but in reality be a 2-in-1 NIC, or even more.
Do such cards exist?
What's your experience with them regarding reliability, performance, price etc.?
Max. how many NICs can a PCI-slot of a modern mainboard handle?

On Nov 12, 10:34*pm, "Adem" <for-usenet...@alicewho.com> wrote:
> Are there any Ethernet 100BaseTX NIC's (w/PCI-Interface)
> that have more than one RJ45 jack?
> Ie. it shall occupy just 1 slot on the mainboard
> but in reality be a 2-in-1 NIC, or even more.
> Do such cards exist?
> What's your experience with them regarding reliability, performance, price etc.?
> Max. how many NICs can a PCI-slot of a modern mainboard handle?


These are fairly common, but are usually targeted at server
applications. Just Google for "multiport NIC". You might have
trouble finding any of these still in Fast Ethernet (100Mb) form, but
the Gig-E ones are common. Two and four port cards are common, but
I've seen other sizes on (rare) occasion. Intel, for example, makes
multi port cards in 1Gb and 10Gb forms (duals for both speeds, but
quad 1Gb boards). They also list a dual 100Mb NIC on their web site,
but it's an older model, but appears to be still available.

Other vendors make them too.

They do, in fact, look just like multiple NICs to the host system.
I’ve seen implementations that are multiple PCI functions on a device,
as well as multiple devices behind a PCI bridge (which makes very
little difference to the drivers).

The reliability is not really different than for comparable single
port cards. And performance is usually similar, although there can be
overall limits based on the shared bus. Remember that a baseline 32
bit 33MHz PCI slot is about 1Gb/s (total), a 64 bit 133Mhz PCI-X slot
is 8Gb/s (total), and PCI-E is 2Gb/s in each direction per lane (IOW
4Gb/s total for a 1x slot). Also remember that most server Ethernet
connections these days are full duplex, so a quad 1Gb NIC potentially
needs 8Gb/s on the bus. The software stack will be the biggest
concern if you’re looking to push anything approaching those rates.

Pricing tends to be rather higher than an equivalent number of single
port server NICs, which is, of course, rather higher than workstation
class NICs.

Adem wrote:

> Are there any Ethernet 100BaseTX NIC's (w/PCI-Interface)
> that have more than one RJ45 jack?
> Ie. it shall occupy just 1 slot on the mainboard
> but in reality be a 2-in-1 NIC, or even more.
> Do such cards exist?

e.g. http://www.soekris.com/lan16x1.htm
lan1621 = 56 EUR
lan1641 = 82 EUR

> What's your experience with them regarding reliability, performance, price, etc?

I've used the lan1641 in Linux 2.6 and it worked as expected.
(AFAIR I could send 380 Mbit/s on a low-end system.)

> Max. how many NICs can a PCI-slot of a modern mainboard handle?

The bottleneck will probably be the PCI bus itself.

PCI and 100BASE-T are old tech ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/320116.pdf

Regards.

In comp.os.linux.networking Adem <for-usenet-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Are there any Ethernet 100BaseTX NIC's (w/PCI-Interface)
> that have more than one RJ45 jack?
> Ie. it shall occupy just 1 slot on the mainboard
> but in reality be a 2-in-1 NIC, or even more.
> Do such cards exist?
> What's your experience with them regarding reliability, performance,
> price etc.?
> Max. how many NICs can a PCI-slot of a modern mainboard handle?

Modern and "PCI" don't really go together. PCI-X and certainly PCIe
would go with "modern" today. So, do you have a system with just PCI
slots, and if so, are they 33 MHz 32 bit, 66 MHz 32 bit, 33 MHx 64 bit
or 66 MHz 64 bit? How well a dual or quad-port 100BT or GbE card
could be driven will depend on that.

rick jones
--
Process shall set you free from the need for rational thought.
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...