1000baseSX

[Mercutio]

I've recently come into possession of an 8 port 1000baseSX switch and some cables.

Has anyone ever in the history of time seen either 32 bit PCI or any sort of PCIe NICs that support some form of 1000baseSX connectivity? Cheapest things I can find are TrendNet 1x PCIe NICs for $150 a pop.

 

[ddrueding]

The last time I played with 1000baseSX was just for the uplinks between switches, and the Cisco adapters cost triple that.

 

[Chewy509]

Last time I used 1000SX for PC -> switch connectivity was for some Sun Ultra Workstations, and hence using Sun PCI adapters, which are in the same price range as the Intel adapters.

Newegg has some Intel NICs (coming in PCI, PCI-X and PCIe) starting from US$499.

Another option is to use some Fibre convertors to go from 1000SX to 802.3ab (1000BaseT), and these are around the $80-$100 mark on newegg.

 

[Mercutio]

The whole point is to eliminate copper. If I get actual 1000Mbit, I'm looking at roughly 3x the throughput for network transfers vs. cat6.

On the other hand, since I don't have any 64 bit PCI slots anyplace, it looks like cheap NICs are out of the question right now.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. The PCIe 1x cards are probably the cheapest fast cards you can get.

 

[blakerwry]

The whole point is to eliminate copper. If I get actual 1000Mbit, I'm looking at roughly 3x the throughput for network transfers vs. cat6.

On the other hand, since I don't have any 64 bit PCI slots anyplace, it looks like cheap NICs are out of the question right now.

I have a 1000BaseSX Intel PRO/1000 (82542) PCI-X card that came with one of our dell servers. Dell sells it as the Dell 1561E. Basically looks like a Cisco GBIC on a PCI card. Can be found in quantity on ebay for $25-$50.

Unfortunately, I don't know that it is any faster than the onboard Broadcom NetXtreme II's (1000BaseT over cat5e). I don't have identical switched setups to compare, but on the Intel card, I can get 800Mbit in, 500Mbit out. On the Broadcom's I get 940Mbit in and out (TCP test, no jumbo frames).

While the card is PCI-X, I'm sure Dell makes a PCIe version as well. In my experience Dell hardware is pretty good (usually re-badged Intel/LSI) and is both prevalent and cheap on ebay.

 

[Mercutio]

The only stuff I can find on Ebay is PCI-X or 64bit PCI, which unfortunately doesn't work on anything I have just sitting around my apartment.