GigE fiber NIC

[Martin Siegert]

I am looking for a good GigE fiber NIC that is well supported under
Linux 2.4.x kernels.

The NIC is going to be used for NFS trafic between the master node that
holds the home directories and the switch. All 70 slave nodes have a
100baseT NFS connection to that switch. Thus performance and reliability
of the NIC/driver combination are equally important. The motherboard
(Tyan Thunder K7) supports 64bit/33MHz PCI.

There seem to be the following cards that are supported under Linux:

- 3Com 3c985B-SX
- Netgear GA620
- Syskonnect SK-9843
- National Semiconductor DP83820

Intel makes GigE cards as well, but the driver is not distributed with
the kernel. Thus I would rely on Intel to have a driver available when
I want to upgrade the kernel.

My google searches did not come up with any information about the availability
of Packet Engines NICs (now Alcatel) and Alteon AceNIC (now Nortel).

Any suggestions/recommendations?

Thanks,
Martin

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Martin Siegert
Academic Computing Services                        phone: (604) 291-4691
Simon Fraser University                            fax:   (604) 291-4242
Burnaby, British Columbia                          email: siegert at sfu.ca
Canada  V5A 1S6
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