Re: APPLE - 4 Port Ethernet 10/100 PCI Card 8SERVER012A1

[Al - image hosting services <azick%zickswebventures.com@localhost>]

Hi John,

On Mon, 5 May 2008, John Klos wrote:
> >> I am looking for a 4 port network card. I found one of these online and I
> >> was wondering if they are supported by NetBSD. I can't seem to find any
> >> documentation on what chipset they use so it is really hard to say, but I
> >> thought maybe someone on this list may have tried one.
> >
> > The only ones I can think of right now which we /do/ support are Sun Quad
> > FastEthernet ( also known as QFE ) cards. On the other hand, any card that's
> > just a bunch of ethernet controllers behind a PCI-PCI bridge should Just
> > Work(tm).
>
> I have an Adaptec ANA-6944A/TX card which is not much more than a PCI
> bridge and four tlp* interfaces on one card. The pictures I can see of
> that Apple card appear to show a single larger chip which most likely
> would be the PCI bridge plus four smaller chips which would be the
> individual ethernet interfaces.
>
> Why do you need four separate interfaces? Do you just want a way for two
> or three local machines to be able to talk to each other?

I would like to put in a 3rd server and have a private netowrk between my
servers. If I backup over the colos switch, then that gets counted against
my monthly transfer, so it can become pretty exspensive.

> If you want more than two local machines to be able to talk to the machine
> which has this card without needing an external ethernet switch, be aware
> that you'll have to set up routing on the interfaces because they are
> completely separate from one another. On the other hand, if you just need
> to share one interface with several other machines, you can get a card
> which looks like this:
>
> http://www.outletpc.com/c4504.html
>
> It's basically a single ethernet interface and a four port 10/100 Mbps
> switch on a single card. I have two of them in one of my machines so I
> don't need external switches for the few devices which are connected.

I took a look at this and that is a pretty cool idea. I think that would
be easier to setup, because all the computers should be on the same
network.

Thanks,
Al