*BSD News Article 86633


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From: jaitken@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (Jeff Aitken)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: low-cost ethernet recomendations?
Date: 10 Jan 1997 14:29:04 -0500
Organization: Virginia Tech Computer Science Dept, Blacksburg, VA
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Tim Singletary (tsingle@sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov) wrote:

: Will any of the low cost ($30 or so) ethernet cards work with FreeBSD?
: How bad is their performance?  

I'll second J'oerg's recommendation for an SMC 8013.  I've got three of
these in use with both FreeBSD and Windows NT machines, and they're
great.  Seems to me I ran some very informal benchmarks awhile back and
was able to converse between two machines on a very lightly loaded
ethernet at a respectable fraction of line speed, so their performance
isn't all that bad.  

Another (potentially attractive) feature is that they make a combo
version (the 8013EWC maybe?  Or EWP??) that has all three types of
connector (TP, BNC, and AUI) so you can continue to use the cards for
years, no matter what sort of network you need to plug into.

On the other hand, I have no idea what these things cost nowadays, so I
can't tell you if they're in the $30 range or not.

-- 
Jeff Aitken 
jaitken@dimension.net