[SWLUG] gigabit ethernet cards for linux

[Glenn Booth]

Hi,

First, thanks to all for the information. I actually managed to get
the 8169 driver to load in the end, but it's been nothing but hassle
ever since. I couldn't get the "from source" module to load, but then
I had a head slapping moment or three when I realised there was a
precompiled .ko module already in Ubuntu. Doh.

On 16/10/05, Steve Hill <steve at nexusuk.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Glenn Booth wrote:
>
> > Can anyone recommend a gigabit ethernet PCI card that has decent linux
> > driver support on 2.6 kernels?
>
> The Intel Etherexpress 1000 seems to work well.

That's what I'll probably go with, thanks.

>
> > I've spent most of this evening wrestling with a Realtek 8169 based
> > PCI card, and I've had no joy. I can compile the module ok, but I keep
> > getting errors when loading the module - it seems I'm not alone,
>
> Don't bother with the 8169 - we had them at my old work because the bosses
> were too cheap to get decent cards (which was daft since we were supposed
> to be using them for load-testing gigabit systems).  My experience of the
> 8169 is that it causes massive instabilities under load (not sure if this
> is the driver or the hardware at fault but I could reliably get any
> machine in the office with an 8169 card to hard lock up by trying to
> saturate the gigabit network).

My experience is the similar, but it misbehaves even on a quiet
network (six machines here, very little traffic). For some reason the
network will just disappear, then reappear again a random time later.
If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a configuration or cabling
issue, but I've ruled that out, and I'm convinced it's hardware or the
driver now. Works fine in Windows, though, so it's probably the
driver.

Thanks again for the help.

Regards,

Glenn.