Dual Port Server NIC

[Howell]

Can I put this in a regular PCI slot? The space for the slot in the back doesn't look big enough.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3403828932&category=28029

Do you know of a Dual Port Server NIC that will fit a desktop PCI slot?

 

[Mercutio]

iGary is really quite fond of something along these lines..

 

[Mercutio]

BTW: why the new nick?

 

[Howell]

Do you know of a Dual Port Server NIC that will fit a desktop PCI slot?

Let me know what you find out from your purchase.

 

[Mercutio]

I left you the good one. Or didn't you see it. BIN priced @ $15?

 

[blakerwry]

The space for the slot in the back doesn't look big enough

you're right, that does look odd... like the card would extend past where the screw holds the card in place.... not to mention the other side of the slot back which will likely prevent the card from being inserted into the PCI slot...

but you can make it fit, right?

 

[honold]

i use dual intels and quad adaptecs, both are fine.

you really need to save pci space that much?

 

[Clocker]

That dual NIC should fit a 32-bit PCI slot no problem. I used a Compaq Netilligent card for a while and it worked fine and looked similar to that one. It did take up two IRQs though....

C

 

[Howell]

i use dual intels and quad adaptecs, both are fine.

It appears that the card spec is called PCI Hot-Plug. I have been so far unable to find any concrete evidence that this card will or won't fit in a standard 32-bit slot. I haven't decided if that's because it is obvious that it will or obvious that it won't.

you really need to save pci space that much?

The onboard NIC on my EPIA has failed. I want to keep using my small 2677R. So, yes.

 

[Howell]

i use dual intels and quad adaptecs, both are fine.

I meant to ask if you were using them with Free/OpenBSD.

 

[Howell]

That dual NIC should fit a 32-bit PCI slot no problem. I used a Compaq Netilligent card for a while and it worked fine and looked similar to that one. It did take up two IRQs though....

C

Things look promising then.

 

[honold]

ha! i have 2 (out of 2) epias with 'failed ethernet' here too. here's a tip: take it out of the 2677 case, and it will work. it's the case's dc psu that causes it

yes i used them with freebsd.

to wit, compaq's (intel-based) dual adapters weren't too expensive, and they can have a module added to them to add gigabit or another 2 100bt.

 

[Howell]

ha! i have 2 (out of 2) epias with 'failed ethernet' here too. here's a tip: take it out of the 2677 case, and it will work. it's the case's dc psu that causes it

4.1. My Ethernet adapter refuses to work properly, or only works some of the time.
First of all, update your BIOS. Do you still have the problem? The onboard Ethernet of EPIAs is often the first thing to stop working when there is not enough power getting to the board. It does not necessarily mean the Ethernet port is broken. Check your PSU is capable of supporting all your devices. With a 55W PSU there is only 4.58A to play with at 12V, but this should still be enough to support a board, hard drive, slimline drive and most PCI cards. If you have a full size CDROM on there too, you're drawing too much power! There *was* a problem with very early Morex Cubid 2677 cases (with a similar PSU), but Morex have fixed this problem.

http://www.mini-itx.com/faq.asp#Troubleshooting0

to wit, compaq's (intel-based) dual adapters weren't too expensive, and they can have a module added to them to add gigabit or another 2 100bt.

heh. I looked at these a few months ago but didn't buy cause I wasn't ready. I look here, I research a model number and I get one off ebay for $15.90. This is the only thing I could find that a) had drivers for FreeBSD aand b) would work in a 32-bit PCI slot. Not bad for $15.

 

[Howell]

I left you the good one. Or didn't you see it. BIN priced @ $15?

Yeah I saw it. I really did mean let me know if this card works for you. Unfortunately, that card doesn't have Free* drivers so it's a no go for me.

 

[honold]

i have the 1stgen 2677

 

[Mercutio]

MMmmmm.. port aggregation.
obyogyahog....<drool>

I'm gonna throw it in my fileserver at work, actually (win2ks... and this is what's stunning to me: It's a "server" in that it's in a 4U rackmount enclosure with a highpoint PCI controller for its two "big disks"... but it's also an AthlonXP on an Asus microATX motherboard and exactly one free PCI slot. Some things ought to be illegal), to see if I can cut down on the time it takes for those damned roaming profiles to load up. If I actually get it at that $5 price point, I'll be overjoyed.

 

[Howell]

i have the 1stgen 2677

Upgrade!

 

[Howell]

obyogyahog....<drool>

heh, I had to sound it out to figure out your code.

 

[mubs]

Are dual-port nics treated as two separate NICs (i.e. 2 IP addresses) or one?

When used in a server, can you connect both to the same switch for twice the throughput (servicing two requests simultaneously)?

Thanks.

 

[Mercutio]

That depends entirely on if they suck or not.

Some Compaq cards I've dealt with will do it as will the adaptecs we've been talking about. I've seen Intel and 3Com cards that won't.

Of course, you can use any dual card as two or more seperate logical devices and effectively have several 100mbit channels. I'm usually more interested in a single high-speed line instead.

 

[Howell]

Are dual-port nics treated as two separate NICs (i.e. 2 IP addresses) or one?

When used in a server, can you connect both to the same switch for twice the throughput (servicing two requests simultaneously)?

Thanks.

On all the ones I looked at, you could bond the nics together to act as one bigger pipe but I think the switch has to support this as well.

 

[James]

On all the ones I looked at, you could bond the nics together to act as one bigger pipe but I think the switch has to support this as well.

Not unless you want switch-assisted teaming, ie. you want to double the pipe to the box in both directions. If you just want to double the output of the server into your network through NIC teaming then it shouldn't care what sort of switch you use.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/teaming.html gives a good summary I think.

I have 4 Intel 100M Pro NICs (A$10 each on Ebay, thanks!) that you can bind to get up to 400Mb out, also if one fails the others automatically continue. If you run a server it's probably worth putting in a redundant NIC in anyway, unless you are short on PCI slots.

 

[iGary]

I've spec'd and built a number of servers in the past that used multi-port Ethernet NICs for trunked Ethernet connections running at 200 and 400 Mb/s. The 100 Mb/s Adaptec Duo and Quartet (2-port, 4-port adaptors respectively) can be setup for port aggregation to build high-speed trunks, fault-tolerant Ethernet connectivity with Ethernet NIC failover, or both.


To do this you need an Ethernet switch that supports one of the 2 standards for trunking and failover. Cisco and Intel have competing standards for this capability. I always built trunks using Cisco switches, which allowed me configure trunks for failover and/or aggregation. By the way, the failover capability allows for failure of the NIC, cable, or X number of ports on the switch as long as X is not equal to 100% of the trunk ports.


Most of this capability lies in the advanced NIC drivers and associated software that Adaptec supplies with 1-port, 2-port, and 4-port NICs. You can even use multiple Single64s, Duos, or Quartets for *really* jumbo trunks and/or failover ports. You can also just run them as separate NICs. I once saw a Netware server a few years ago that had 16 Ethernet ports setup with 4-each Quartets! It was part Netware router part Netware file server.


In these days and times, you are better off going with GbE if you need the throughput for multiple reasons -- one of them the lack of multiple NICs and cables!

 

[iGary]

I used a Compaq Netilligent card for a while and it worked fine and looked similar to that one. It did take up two IRQs though...

Yes, that's because it actually *is* 2 complete Ethernet adaptors -- along with a PCI bridge circuit -- all on one physical PCI adaptor. This is the reason why multi-port Ethernet NICs cost more than 2 similar Ethernet NICs. If they include sophisticated drivers for port aggregation and/or port failover, that'll push the cost up a bit more yet (i.e. -- R&D).

 

[mubs]

iGary, agreed you're better of with GbE. The problem with that is you need a switch with at least one GbE port, and most networks today use Fast_E. Buying a new switch costs money, and s-m-a-l-l businesses are very cost conscious; for them, a second PCI server NIC would be a lot cheaper. I have this exact scenario right now, and hence my original question.

 

[GIANT]

iGary, agreed you're better of with GbE. The problem with that is you need a switch with at least one GbE port, and most networks today use Fast_E. Buying a new switch costs money, and s-m-a-l-l businesses are very cost conscious; for them, a second PCI server NIC would be a lot cheaper. I have this exact scenario right now, and hence my original question.

Yes, I am totally aware of the cost justification process. But, I am not aware of your need for 2 NICs. If you are pursuing more bandwidth over an IP address, then you are likely wasting your time, because from the sound of the s-m-a-l-l business environment you've presented, you probably have just a common garden variety Ethernet switch or Ethernet hub. To build a fat bandwidth pipe, you need a dedicated port switch that will allow you to do that. Is your Ethernet switch capable of doing that? Getting 2 (or more) Ethernet NICs and software to allow you to build such a pipe is easy, a small business owning such a sophisticated switch to allow you to configure that pipe on the other end of the Ethernet premise wiring is a bit less common.

My original point was and still is that if you were buying new today, someone can come out ahead cost-wise and performance-wise by simply acquiring a GbE switch instead of mucking around building trunks with expensive dedicated port 100 MbE switches. There are still perfectly legitimate reasons with acquiring 100 Mb/s Ethernet switches that will allow you to build in failover capability, provided that you really don't need much more than 200 Mb/s bandwidth because of port usage.

With a bit of wise selection of which computers plug into which ports on an affordable non-dedicated port Gb Ethernet switch, you'll come out significantly ahead in price/performance over any 100 Mb/s Ethernet switch.

 

[Mercutio]

Hey mubs, don't forget that GbE handles crossover automagically, so if you're just doing it point-to point, two NICs should set you back less than $90.

I have two of my servers connected via a GbE link. They route between each other and two different VLANs, which is a lot happier than letting my GbE-less Catalyst do it.

 

[James]

Also I repeat my point that if you're bonding together ethernet cards to increase the bandwidth out of your server (the usual requirement, after all) then the switch does not need to be intelligent to support this.

 

[mubs]

GIANT wrote:

My original point was and still is that if you were buying new today

Guess I missed that point . I'm coming strictly from a situation where they already have a server with a 100Mb nic, a 10/100 switch, and transfer quite a bit of scanned images back and forth (internist medical office). They're the kind that won't pay $450 to buy a switch with a single GbE port and a GbE nic for the server.

There's a dentist I know who's on the cutting edge (hee hee); he's always got the latest instruments, some gee whiz software that scans everything into a database that he then retrieves on a client PC when he's treating a patient. He was whining about how long it took to display the stuff on the client. This was 5-6 years ago, when I was a one-time patient (can't afford his charges). I've never seen his set up. Could be multiple bottlenecks in the server, network and client.

So, James, I can stick an SMC 100Mb nic, a 3Com 100Mb nic in the server, install the drivers, connect them to the switch and have two independent, simultaneously active pipes in/out the server? How do clients know which nic to talk to? Because I'd divide the clients into two subnets and use a different server nic for each?

I ain't got no formal education in all this; all my network experience has been with single server nics and "conventional" setups. I'm largely a self-taught, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants doofus.

Please, pray elucidate!

 

[James]

My point was that the switch doesn't need to be smart. However, the drivers for the NICs do need to support teaming, or you're stuffed.

I don't know if NICs from different manufacturers, even they individually do support teaming, will work together.

When teaming is successfully turned on, you don't need to assign subnets, it Just Works. Your suggestion however will allow you to use two different NICs (just assign different IPs to each NIC) and might be your best solution if you can't get NIC teaming to work, which I suspect you won't be able to (the 3Com is probably okay, the SMC probably not).

 

[Handruin]

What about MS's version of Network load balancing?

 

[James]

Yeah I assumed they weren't running Win2K advanced or datacentre.

 

[mubs]

Thanks James. I've been sleep deprived for the last two weeks, and unlike Merc, become incoherent as a consequence.

In the specific case I brought up (internists' office), there are medium sized requests from multiple users as opposed to large-sized requests from a few. So IMHO, the ability to service two different requests concurrently is important. I realize there is the overhead from switching between PCI cards (or between miltiple ports on the same card). I'm convinced, though, that in this case the size of the data is large enough that overall user experience will be faster despite the overhead. Of course, if I could wave the magic wand I'd go GbE.

James gussed right. They're still on NT Server 4.0. The app. is also significantly behind current release (though still supported). The important thing is that their setup does everything they want from a business needs point-of-view.

Thanks for the info--this place is fantastic!

 

[Mercutio]

I'm an extreme insomniac, but I think it's Doug you're referring to on that count, mubs.

 

[timwhit]

Merc - are you ever online in the middle of the night like me? Not that it's the middle of the night yet, it will be at 4am though. Blake is up pretty late most nights too. By 3am there usually aren't too many people on.

 

[blakerwry]

nice to see someone noticing... i have a bad habit of staying up late... I got 2 exams tomorrow and have to get up before 8:00 (...in the morning)

so I think i'll be off.

 

[Mercutio]

I usually wander off to read between midnight and one, actually, and read until I pass out.

 

[Dozer]

self-taught, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants doofus.

At long last the search is over. I have been looking for a phrase that describes my computer skill...

 

[mubs]

Dozer! So you're my long-lost twin our parents kept telling me about! Do you also have the big bulbous nose, the cauliflower ears and.....I'll let you describe the rest so I know you're rally my twin.

 

[Dozer]

Do you also have the big bulbous nose, the cauliflower ears and...

Errrr...well...maybe we aren't identical twins.