On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 10:27:58 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

snip

They may of course ... but what are the chances of an integrated NIC
(even an Intel one) being as capable (on a desktop board specifically)
as an add-on card,

OTOH the integrated NIC does better bandwidth wise to the motherboard ram.

Cite?


in the same way onboard video is rarely as capable as even
the simplest add-on video card (demonstrated by the size
(lack of?) of any heatsinks on the on-board video solutions)?

That's a different issue

It' was a conceptual comparison.

and the highest performance video
cards cost more than the entire motherboard, for a reason.

Of course, however, I wasn't talking about the highest but the lowest.
I've not seen even an entry level PCIe video card that doesn't have a
heatsink. I have seen many many onboard video solutions that don't.
I'm not saying either doesn't exist, I'm saying I haven't seen (or
noticed) such.

Cheers, T i m

T i m wrote
Rod Speed wrote

They may of course ... but what are the chances of an
integrated NIC (even an Intel one) being as capable
(on a desktop board specifically) as an add-on card,

OTOH the integrated NIC does better bandwidth wise to the motherboard
ram.

Cite?

Don't need a cite, card slots don't have as much bandwidth.

in the same way onboard video is rarely as capable as even
the simplest add-on video card (demonstrated by the size
(lack of?) of any heatsinks on the on-board video solutions)?

That's a different issue

It' was a conceptual comparison.

It wasn't actually.

and the highest performance video cards cost
more than the entire motherboard, for a reason.

Of course, however, I wasn't talking about the highest but the lowest.

For a different reason. Plenty need very little capability in the video
subsystem.

I've not seen even an entry level PCIe video card that doesn't have a
heatsink. I have seen many many onboard video solutions that don't.
I'm not saying either doesn't exist, I'm saying I haven't seen (or
noticed) such.

Because there is no downside in including the least capable video on the
motherboard.

T i m wrote:
They may of course ... but what are the chances of an integrated NIC
(even an Intel one) being as capable (on a desktop board specifically)
as an add-on card, in the same way onboard video is rarely as capable
as even the simplest add-on video card (demonstrated by the size (lack
of?) of any heatsinks on the on-board video solutions)?

Gigabit is pretty mature technology here. It doesn't take much silicon
area, or much processing power these days: the link is likely to be the
limiting factor. I think it's approximately a cut and paste of the silicon
IP from the external NIC chip onto the motherboard chipset.
(Bearing in mind the ex-server 1G NICs you might buy on ebay are probably 10
years old, but still do the job)

If you're talking 10/40/100G then smarts in the NIC make a bigger
difference. You don't get those integrated (some mobos have 10G, but it's
an extra chip). That's also where thermals make more of a difference.

OOI, is there a utility that is good for doing such network throughput
tests or is it more 'real world' to transfer a largish block of data
(as I believe you mention previously) and just time the result?

I don't know of a tool, but in networking the relevant number is packets per
second, not Gbps. Most of the overhead is on dealing with packet headers
and so on, rather than shovelling data out the door. Lots of small packets
are more work than a few large ones.

Theo

On 02 Feb 2016 13:43:15 +0000 (GMT), Theo
wrote:

T i m wrote:
They may of course ... but what are the chances of an integrated NIC
(even an Intel one) being as capable (on a desktop board specifically)
as an add-on card, in the same way onboard video is rarely as capable
as even the simplest add-on video card (demonstrated by the size (lack
of?) of any heatsinks on the on-board video solutions)?

Gigabit is pretty mature technology here. It doesn't take much silicon
area, or much processing power these days: the link is likely to be the
limiting factor. I think it's approximately a cut and paste of the silicon
IP from the external NIC chip onto the motherboard chipset.

And you feel that is still the case between most on-board offerings
and server centric add-on cards Theo? I wonder why they sell such
things (over and above basic add-on NICs where people want to replace
a faulty on-board or add another port etc).

(Bearing in mind the ex-server 1G NICs you might buy on ebay are probably 10
years old, but still do the job)

Ok.

If you're talking 10/40/100G then smarts in the NIC make a bigger
difference. You don't get those integrated (some mobos have 10G, but it's
an extra chip).

Ok.

That's also where thermals make more of a difference.

I didn't consider 'thermals' and NIX though, just video cards.

OOI, is there a utility that is good for doing such network throughput
tests or is it more 'real world' to transfer a largish block of data
(as I believe you mention previously) and just time the result?

I don't know of a tool, but in networking the relevant number is packets per
second, not Gbps. Most of the overhead is on dealing with packet headers
and so on, rather than shovelling data out the door. Lots of small packets
are more work than a few large ones.

Understood. I ask because I haven't any real idea what the throughput
is here but all I know is I can generally do what I need to do without
waiting too long, Inc moving a few G's worth of .iso images about. ;-)

Alternative NICs are academic here as this PC is a Mac Mini, my server
an Atom board with no spare slots and only an onboard NIC and the rest
are phones, laptops and tablets that connect via WiFi in any case.

The server I built running WHS V2 to replace the old WHS V1 is on a
more std motherboard so there could be room for a better NIC in there
(so I'll check out the cheap Intel NICS you mentioned). ;-)

Cheers, T i m

p.s. The only problem is I don't know if I would recoup the power
consumed by the onboard LAN if I disabled it and what the add-on NIC
might consume extra and to what advantage in general?

On Mon, 01 Feb 2016 08:25:03 +0000, T i m wrote:

On Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:49:56 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

On Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:10:41 +0000, T i m wrote:
snip

I'll have to test mine but being yours is a 'real' server (focused on
i/o and not economy like mine) is likely to be much better an ant
generic PC hardware running as a server.


That won't necessarily be true. For several years, I tried just about
every trick I could to get the data transfer rates between my NAS4Free
box and my win2k desktop machine (connected via 2 or 3 metres worth of
CAT5 in total using an 8 port Netgear GBit switch above 60MB/s (circa
500Mbps). Both machines were using 2010 vintage MoBos with built in GBit
lan ports and dual core CPUs.

The CrystalDiskMark results were interesting in that sustained large
sequential transfer rates hovered around the 75MB/s mark for any of the
four disks in the NAS box (mapped to local drive letters) almost without
regard to any real world stop watch timed benchmarked improvements I was
able to make.

The biggest improvement arose out of replacing the single core Semperon
in the NAS box with a dual core Athlon 64 chip

snip more interesting stuff for brevity

That would reinforce what I was thinking regarding the poor i/o of a
'std' (onboard NIC) compared with one focused on efficient / low CPU
involvement / server orientated NIC?

That ought not be an issue with anything made during the past decade
(NICs had been forced to utilise DMA ever since the advent of 8MHz
clocked 80286 processors - that Novell server box was built on such a
system board and was able to max out the 10Mbps cheapernet link with
ease, so much so that the older 286 machines donated to my children with
pre- IDE HDDs fitted could load up the Doom game faster from the server
than they could from their own local HDDs (300 to 450 KB/s HDD transfer
rates way back then, circa 1997).

All NICs since those days of ISA slot cards use DMA. However, transfer
protocol techniques have gotten a lot more sophisticated with the advent
of Fast and Gbit ethernet adapters which may well add to the cpu overhead
in the cheaper brands compared to the use of more sophisticated silicon
on the Intel adapters (somewhat similar to the use of a host
controllerless modem being way better than the ****e 'winmodem' but not
quite as good as a standalone external modem).


Transferring data is a very I/O based task and therefore shouldn't
require much in the way of CPU. So, as long as the hardware involved was
self sufficient (could use DMA etc) then it should offload much of the
CPU load onto the Ethernet card itself (and why the sell such cards for
'servers' presumably)?

When network speeds were limited to 10 and 100Mbps, the then current
'wisdom' was that you didn't need much by way of CPU 'grunt' in a (file)
server box (now referred to as a NAS box) since the long established use
of DMA for both HDDs and NICs offloaded the I/O 'donkeywork' from the CPU
(which even then was several thousands of times more powerful than the
humble 80286 such local network server technology had started out with).

Indeed, when I was upgrading my 'server' (now to be known as a NAS box)
back in 2010, I rather thought the 2.2GHz clocked Semperon cpu was
'serious overkill' for the task in hand (I hadn't counted on the abysmal
scaling performance of Gbit ethernet adapters in regard of CPU
requirements) hence my underclocking in order to trade performance for
reduced power consumption courtesy of undervolting the core voltage.


Network *and* any hard disk controllers may help.

These days, any modern 'entry level' MoBo + dual/quad core cpu + 4 to 8
GB (or more) of ram with an unheatsinked built in graphics chip, even
when using software RAID, should have ample reserve with regard to I/O
throughput (at least as far as a SoHo home server box in a Gbit LAN
system is concerned). Let's face it, even a 6 year old micro-ATX with
SATA2 ports and its own built in Gbit LAN port hardware seems to be quite
capable of this trick (at least when it's blessed with a dual core Athlon
64 - and that test with a decently specced win7 client machine suggests
that even a single core cpu may have sufficed - I didn't bother testing
this at the time).


http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...ducts/gigabit-
server-adapters/overview.html


That's an interesting site but I think the real problem with
alternatives, which have equal on-chip support for checksum offloading
and VLAN support and so on, is the rather spotty driver support in the
*nix based NOSes used in a lot of commercial NAS boxes (as well as "The
Usual Suspects" in home brewed NAS/server boxes - Debian Linux (and
derivatives) and NAS4Free/FreeNAS and so on). With an Intel adapter,
you're more or less guaranteed good driver support, with other makes,
less so (none or broken driver support ime).

There doesn't seem to be the same issue with HDD interface driver
support, at least not for the more mature chipsets. The latest 'bleeding
edge' stuff will always be problematical with the open source based OSes,
usually resolved in time but sometimes never, especially if it's a short
lived 'transient' "Fad" like technological development which can be tough
if you had the misfortune to buy into what seemed to be the latest last
word in technological development in MoBo hardware only to discover it
was merely a short lived intermediate step towards an even better longer
lived technology (RIMM anyone?).

NAS (Network Attached Storage) boxes are even more orientated towards
offering 'services' than the earlier breed of 'Servers' than their title
would suggest. If your main concern is 'file serving', you'd be well
advised to make sure all unnecessary 'services' are disabled (DLNA/UPnP,
iTunes/DAAP, Dynamic DNS, Webserver, SNMP, Unison, FTP, TFTP, NFS and so
on to quote just half of what's built into a NAS4Free box.

Of course, if you plan on using the NAS to act as a media server, you'll
need DLNA/UPnP and its ilk but don't make the mistake of enabling any
transcoding features unless your NAS box has a higher spec than your
desktop workstation - just make damn sure your chosen media streaming
client is capable of handling your chosen media file types without
needing such a 'crutch' (or else avoid the more obscure, less well
supported media formats in the first place).

Anyone who uses torrent sources, enabling the BitTorrent client on the
NAS is a no-brainer (assuming the NAS is left to run 24/7). The torrent
client demands very little use of system resources, even on an
underpowered NAS toy. Indeed, anyone heavily into tying up their desktop
PC overnight, accumulating torrents, can justify the use of a toy NAS,
with a built in torrent client service (pretty well all of them), on this
one feature alone.

Harking back to the topic of cabling choice, I'd have to say that CAT5
or CAT5e is the correct answer in the OP's case. Gbit ethernet is likely
to remain viable for the next decade, by which time fibre optic kit
should become cheap enough to consider using the CAT5 cables as 'draw
strings' to pull optical fibre cable through, especially if the CAT5 was
installed with this in mind in the first place.

--
Johnny B Good

Johnny B Good wrote:

any modern 'entry level' MoBo + dual/quad core cpu + 4 to 8
GB (or more) of ram with an unheatsinked built in graphics chip

Apart from gaming or CAD machines (with a PCIe graphics card or two)
there is unlikely to *be* a separate graphics chip these days, the GPU
inside the CPU has reached the point of being good enough ...

On 29/01/2016 00:33, Theo wrote:

Also multiple ethernet ports mean you can segment the network: not put the
doorbell on the same network as the banking data. You can do that on a
switch with VLANs, but to do that you need a more expensive switch.

Last time I played with vlans at home I locked every computer out and
couldn't get access to the router to sort out my mistake without a
factory reset IIRC.

Another case of too much knowledge with too little experience can cause
big problems at the press of a button.


Another reason I take router config dumps before fiddling with the
networking dark side... (most of the time)

T i m wrote
Theo wrote
T i m wrote

They may of course ... but what are the chances of an integrated NIC
(even an Intel one) being as capable (on a desktop board specifically)
as an add-on card, in the same way onboard video is rarely as capable
as even the simplest add-on video card (demonstrated by the size (lack
of?) of any heatsinks on the on-board video solutions)?

Gigabit is pretty mature technology here. It doesn't take much silicon
area, or much processing power these days: the link is likely to be the
limiting factor. I think it's approximately a cut and paste of the
silicon
IP from the external NIC chip onto the motherboard chipset.

And you feel that is still the case between most on-board offerings
and server centric add-on cards Theo? I wonder why they sell such
things (over and above basic add-on NICs where people want to
replace a faulty on-board or add another port etc).

Because most don't need the very high thruput
NICs so they aren't there on all motherboards.

They are on server motherboards.

(Bearing in mind the ex-server 1G NICs you might buy
on ebay are probably 10 years old, but still do the job)

Ok.

If you're talking 10/40/100G then smarts in the NIC
make a bigger difference. You don't get those integrated
(some mobos have 10G, but it's an extra chip).

Ok.

That's also where thermals make more of a difference.

I didn't consider 'thermals' and NIX though, just video cards.

OOI, is there a utility that is good for doing such network throughput
tests or is it more 'real world' to transfer a largish block of data
(as I believe you mention previously) and just time the result?

I don't know of a tool, but in networking the relevant number is packets
per
second, not Gbps. Most of the overhead is on dealing with packet headers
and so on, rather than shovelling data out the door. Lots of small
packets
are more work than a few large ones.

Understood. I ask because I haven't any real idea what the throughput
is here but all I know is I can generally do what I need to do without
waiting too long, Inc moving a few G's worth of .iso images about. ;-)

Alternative NICs are academic here as this PC is a Mac Mini, my server
an Atom board with no spare slots and only an onboard NIC and the
rest are phones, laptops and tablets that connect via WiFi in any case.

The server I built running WHS V2 to replace the old WHS V1 is on
a more std motherboard so there could be room for a better NIC in
there (so I'll check out the cheap Intel NICS you mentioned). ;-)

p.s. The only problem is I don't know if I would recoup the power
consumed by the onboard LAN if I disabled it and what the add-on
NIC might consume extra and to what advantage in general?

On Wed, 3 Feb 2016 07:15:26 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

snip

And you feel that is still the case between most on-board offerings
and server centric add-on cards Theo? I wonder why they sell such
things (over and above basic add-on NICs where people want to
replace a faulty on-board or add another port etc).

Because most don't need the very high thruput
NICs so they aren't there on all motherboards.

They are on server motherboards.

snip

That's what I thought.shrug

Cheers, T i m

T i m wrote:
On 02 Feb 2016 13:43:15 +0000 (GMT), Theo
wrote:

Gigabit is pretty mature technology here. It doesn't take much silicon
area, or much processing power these days: the link is likely to be the
limiting factor. I think it's approximately a cut and paste of the silicon
IP from the external NIC chip onto the motherboard chipset.

And you feel that is still the case between most on-board offerings
and server centric add-on cards Theo? I wonder why they sell such
things (over and above basic add-on NICs where people want to replace
a faulty on-board or add another port etc).

I've been buying servers this week, as it happens.
Every single one has a 1G port (or two or three) on the motherboard.
The higher end ones have 10G ports on the board.
Some of those also have modules for 40G.

You don't buy additional 1G NICs for these servers because they're 'better'
than the mobo, you buy them because you want more ports. If the mobo
manufacturer put on a lame NIC, that's a good sign to skip that board.

Another factor here is remote access. Often an onboard NIC can be used for
remote management/KVM over IP of the motherboard, possibly selectable. That
doesn't work with a third-party external NIC.

At 10G it's a different question, partly because your choice of NIC depends
on your cabling (copper, optical, SFP+?), your driver stack and your
application (are you going to offload any work to the NIC). But at 1G you
don't need to worry: even an Atom should be able to keep up.
1G is just so slow.

Theo

On 03 Feb 2016 00:51:41 +0000 (GMT), Theo
wrote:

T i m wrote:
On 02 Feb 2016 13:43:15 +0000 (GMT), Theo
wrote:

Gigabit is pretty mature technology here. It doesn't take much silicon
area, or much processing power these days: the link is likely to be the
limiting factor. I think it's approximately a cut and paste of the silicon
IP from the external NIC chip onto the motherboard chipset.

And you feel that is still the case between most on-board offerings
and server centric add-on cards Theo? I wonder why they sell such
things (over and above basic add-on NICs where people want to replace
a faulty on-board or add another port etc).

I've been buying servers this week, as it happens.

Ok.

Every single one has a 1G port (or two or three) on the motherboard.

Ok.

The higher end ones have 10G ports on the board.

Ok.

Some of those also have modules for 40G.

Wow.

You don't buy additional 1G NICs for these servers because they're 'better'
than the mobo, you buy them because you want more ports.

Ok?

If the mobo
manufacturer put on a lame NIC, that's a good sign to skip that board.

And that was my point Theo. An onboard NIC for a basic desktop may
well have a 'lame' NIC AFA Server duties might be concerned but it
could also be perfectly adequate for a std desktop role?

So that was the point ... if we are taking basic desktop hardware and
turning them into servers (as I and others here seem to have done),
*could* we be limiting the maximum output from the server by not
fitting a 'better' NIC?

I'm not stating that all desktop motherboards don't have the same
performance network interfaces as servers or motherboards focused on
server roles, I'm asking, because you can buy add-on NICs that are for
desktop and server rolls, why are there two types if there wasn't a
difference? You may have already answered this by saying 'there isn't
a difference *today*' and that would mean there would be the exact
same on-board NIC on desktop or server solutions supplied today.

Another factor here is remote access. Often an onboard NIC can be used for
remote management/KVM over IP of the motherboard, possibly selectable. That
doesn't work with a third-party external NIC.

I though I had seen an add-on NIC supplied with a small cable that
allowed it to do that (or maybe it was for something else)?

At 10G it's a different question, partly because your choice of NIC depends
on your cabling (copper, optical, SFP+?), your driver stack and your
application (are you going to offload any work to the NIC). But at 1G you
don't need to worry: even an Atom should be able to keep up.
1G is just so slow.

So, 10 workstations steaming video from a real server and the same
streaming from a basic Atom board will see the same throughput on the
'server' NIC (genuine question).

Replacing the on-board NIC on the Atom board with a server specific
NIC wouldn't improve matters at all (assuming the data bottleneck
wasn't elsewhere)?

Cheers, T i m

T i m wrote:
And that was my point Theo. An onboard NIC for a basic desktop may
well have a 'lame' NIC AFA Server duties might be concerned but it
could also be perfectly adequate for a std desktop role?

So that was the point ... if we are taking basic desktop hardware and
turning them into servers (as I and others here seem to have done),
*could* we be limiting the maximum output from the server by not
fitting a 'better' NIC?

There are some different cases:

Recent Intel CPUs have an onboard Intel NIC. That's no point replacing
that.

Older boards may have a discrete NIC chip from a random vendor
'Embedded' stuff may have a discrete NIC (Atoms, Microservers, etc) because
they don't have one on-die, and the board vendor may have chosen a cheap one
Extra NICs may not be Intel (eg a recently purchased 'gaming' board has one
Intel and one Realtek)

If you have heavy workloads, or are worried about drivers, then replacing
make may sense in the latter group. But what I'm getting at is it doesn't,
in general, make sense to buy a new PC and immediately replace the NIC.
Unless you picked a particularly lame PC to begin with.

I though I had seen an add-on NIC supplied with a small cable that
allowed it to do that (or maybe it was for something else)?

Some are, some use one of the existing ports via the BMC CPU (usually an
ARM). Sometimes you have to add a 'key' with firmware or a licence code,
but the functionality is already on the mobo.

So, 10 workstations steaming video from a real server and the same
streaming from a basic Atom board will see the same throughput on the
'server' NIC (genuine question).

For simply pushing packets out the door (eg as a router), 1G is probably the
bottleneck. If you're doing other work (like fetching that stuff off disc,
encoding, etc) then sooner or later you'll run into headroom issues, but
they likely aren't due to the network stack (on *nix anyway, I don't know
about Windows).

Replacing the on-board NIC on the Atom board with a server specific
NIC wouldn't improve matters at all (assuming the data bottleneck
wasn't elsewhere)?

It may help - don't underestimate how bad it can be made due to
cost-reduction. But that's different from the original question of swapping
the onboard Intel NIC for an add-in Intel NIC - there's no point.

Theo

On 03 Feb 2016 12:48:20 +0000 (GMT), Theo
wrote:

snip good stuff for brevity, thanks

Replacing the on-board NIC on the Atom board with a server specific
NIC wouldn't improve matters at all (assuming the data bottleneck
wasn't elsewhere)?

It may help - don't underestimate how bad it can be made due to
cost-reduction. But that's different from the original question of swapping
the onboard Intel NIC for an add-in Intel NIC - there's no point.

I'm not sure that was actually my original question (or it wasn't
meant to be). It was more, 'is there any point replacing an onboard
NIC (Intel or otherwise but I'll go with Intel for these purposes)
with a more server orientated NIC when considering a (home) server?

Now there may not be such a thing as a 'server specific NIC' these
days in which case I could see how there would be no advantage.
However, there do seem to be such things offered by the likes of Intel
themselves and to offer high performance but maybe you are right and
it's just a sales exercise (these days)?

Cheers, T i m

On 03/02/2016 13:51, T i m wrote:

However, there do seem to be such things offered by the likes of Intel
themselves and to offer high performance but maybe you are right and
it's just a sales exercise (these days)?

You buy them for servers when you need more ports than are on board.
Have a look at a recommended setup for a hypervisor with no single
points of failure. That's the market - it's not a sales exercise.

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 18:36:24 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

On 03/02/2016 13:51, T i m wrote:

However, there do seem to be such things offered by the likes of Intel
themselves and to offer high performance but maybe you are right and
it's just a sales exercise (these days)?

You buy them for servers when you need more ports than are on board.
Have a look at a recommended setup for a hypervisor with no single
points of failure. That's the market - it's not a sales exercise.

So, you buy a 'std' card or a 'server' one?

Cheers, T i m

On 03/02/2016 18:45, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 18:36:24 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

On 03/02/2016 13:51, T i m wrote:

However, there do seem to be such things offered by the likes of Intel
themselves and to offer high performance but maybe you are right and
it's just a sales exercise (these days)?

You buy them for servers when you need more ports than are on board.
Have a look at a recommended setup for a hypervisor with no single
points of failure. That's the market - it's not a sales exercise.

So, you buy a 'std' card or a 'server' one?

I just get the ones the supplier sells with the server, thus avoiding
problems with people denying responsibility for the things working.

Intel don't appear to sell cards not described as "Server Adapters", so
if you're buying Intel, that is the standard one.

On Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:00:43 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Johnny B Good wrote:

any modern 'entry level' MoBo + dual/quad core cpu + 4 to 8 GB (or
more) of ram with an unheatsinked built in graphics chip

Apart from gaming or CAD machines (with a PCIe graphics card or two)
there is unlikely to *be* a separate graphics chip these days, the GPU
inside the CPU has reached the point of being good enough ...

Yes, I was wondering whether or not to 'shoehorn' that reference in. :-)

I gave up figuring how to and just left it out.

--
Johnny B Good

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 20:20:20 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

On 03/02/2016 18:45, T i m wrote:
On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 18:36:24 +0000, Clive George
wrote:

On 03/02/2016 13:51, T i m wrote:

However, there do seem to be such things offered by the likes of Intel
themselves and to offer high performance but maybe you are right and
it's just a sales exercise (these days)?

You buy them for servers when you need more ports than are on board.
Have a look at a recommended setup for a hypervisor with no single
points of failure. That's the market - it's not a sales exercise.

So, you buy a 'std' card or a 'server' one?

I just get the ones the supplier sells with the server, thus avoiding
problems with people denying responsibility for the things working.

That's not a bad plan, if you aren't building your own etc.

Intel don't appear to sell cards not described as "Server Adapters", so
if you're buying Intel, that is the standard one.

Right, so that doesn't really help us determine if there is a
difference between std desktop and server grade NIC's then.

Unless any other manufacturer still makes both types and if they do
I'd still question the differences?

Cheers, T i m

En el artículo ,
Clive George escribió:

Intel don't appear to sell cards not described as "Server Adapters", so
if you're buying Intel, that is the standard one.

They do/did a range of "desktop" adapters too. I suspect the difference
is just in the naming and, perhaps, they use the same controller chip
and disable some of the more advanced features in the "desktop" version
drivers.

I have a "Pro/1000 PT Desktop Adapter" (i82572) in my bits box. This is
a superb PCIe adapter. I would be using it but the motherboard I have
has an i217-LM chip on it, and I haven't been able to find out if it
would be worth replacing with the Pro/1000 - suspect not.

In the earlier days of Linux, it was a relief not to have to battle with
the awful drivers for 3Com cards and just ram in an Intel 82556/82557
based card - they Just Worked (tm).

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(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
(")_(")

Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo ,
Clive George escribió:

Intel don't appear to sell cards not described as "Server Adapters", so
if you're buying Intel, that is the standard one.

They do/did a range of "desktop" adapters too. I suspect the difference
is just in the naming and, perhaps, they use the same controller chip
and disable some of the more advanced features in the "desktop" version
drivers.

I was looking at older versions of those, and the different was the Desktop
adaptors were PCI, and the Server adaptors PCI-X. So there was a
performance difference, but only because servers had a faster slot (that
wouldn't take PCI cards).

On the current ones the difference seems to be virtualisation, multiple
ports and fibre options - all hardware features that the average home user
doesn't care about.

Theo

En el artículo , Theo theom+news
@chiark.greenend.org.uk escribió:

I was looking at older versions of those, and the different was the Desktop
adaptors were PCI, and the Server adaptors PCI-X.

Can't have been, because I have a Pro/1000 desktop adapter right here
that is PCI-e.

I also have a few HPaq PCI-X quad-port server adapters - those use 4 x
i82557 controllers.

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(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
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Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , Theo theom+news
@chiark.greenend.org.uk escribió:

I was looking at older versions of those, and the different was the Desktop
adaptors were PCI, and the Server adaptors PCI-X.

Can't have been, because I have a Pro/1000 desktop adapter right here
that is PCI-e.

PCI = traditional 32 bit PCI, shared parallel bus
PCI-X = PCI expanded to 64 bit shared parallel bus, different connector
PCI Express (PCI-e) = point to point serial links, 1/2/4/8/16 lanes

Pro/1000 covers PCI, PCI-X and PCI-e. All modern cards are PCI-e.
The list I was looking at had things like the Pro/1000 MT Desktop as PCI and
the Pro/1000 MT Server as PCI-X - I assume this is a general trend, but I
didn't check every model.

I also have a few HPaq PCI-X quad-port server adapters - those use 4 x
i82557 controllers.

Are you sure? The 82557 is a 32 bit PCI chip, so would be wasted on a 64
bit PCI-X board. I suppose they might have done that if your server only has
a PCI-X slot, or they couldn't route all 64 data lines on the board.

Theo

En el artículo , Theo theom+news
@chiark.greenend.org.uk escribió:

PCI = traditional 32 bit PCI, shared parallel bus
PCI-X = PCI expanded to 64 bit shared parallel bus, different connector
PCI Express (PCI-e) = point to point serial links, 1/2/4/8/16 lanes

I do know the difference, thanks and the one I have here is a
"Pro/1000 PT Desktop adapter"

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prod...op_adapter.pdf

Appears to be a fairly basic PCI-e gig adapter for desktops, but gets
very good reviews for performance.

Pro/1000 covers PCI, PCI-X and PCI-e. All modern cards are PCI-e.
The list I was looking at had things like the Pro/1000 MT Desktop as PCI and
the Pro/1000 MT Server as PCI-X - I assume this is a general trend, but I
didn't check every model.

The two letter suffix indicates features available on the card - TCP
offload, CPU balancing, compatability with hardware virtualisation, etc.
"Server" cards have more features.

I've used several Compaq NC3134 4-port 64-bit PCI-X cards in Proliant
servers. Those used Intel i82559 chips.

ebay 361048145403 shows one with and without the daughterboard.

I also have a few HPaq PCI-X quad-port server adapters - those use 4 x
i82557 controllers.

Are you sure? The 82557 is a 32 bit PCI chip,

Apologies, it's the i82559, not the i82557, but it's still a PCI device.

so would be wasted on a 64
bit PCI-X board.

Not really - if four of them are used and active, the extra bandwidth of
64-bit 133MHz PCI-X is required. I can't remember if some form of
bridge or load balancing chip is used.

I suppose they might have done that if your server only has
a PCI-X slot, or they couldn't route all 64 data lines on the board.

Proliant DL380s, with three PCI-X slots. The rules for fitting cards
are a bit arcane - if you fit a 33MHZ PCI card, it reduces the speed of
all three slots to that speed.

There is only one 133MHZ slot - the other two were 100MHz.

I used LSI Logic U320 PCI-X SCSI cards in them to drive external 16-bay
SCSI/SCSI disk arrays, and later a SCSI/SATA 24-bay array. This one:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/172031648483

a very good card which worked well with Linux. An Adaptec 29320A-R
intermittently locked the machine hard under heavy load.

Think that's enough ancient history for one day


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(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
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