In comp.os.linux.networking John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> "Craig E. Smith" wrote:
> >
> > I'm looking for thoughts on the best NIC card to use for a Linux
> > router implementation. I am concerned with CPU utilization. I have
> > read that some cards support scatter/gather and interrupt mitigation.
> > Thanks for your help.

> I've never seen CPU utilization be a problem except at Gigabit speeds.
> Unless you're creating a very high-end router or have very limited CPU
> resources the bottleneck will lie elsewhere, IMHO.

On aside note, have you tried out enabling jumbo frames with GB
NICs?

> I see another poster has recommended Intel NICs. I'll second that. The
> e100 and e1000 drivers in the stock Linux kernel are (or at least were
> originally) supplied by Intel. IMHO it's hard to beat vendor-supplied
> open-source drivers in the kernel.

Unsure if that has changed but I always use the eepro100 driver
from Donald Becker, as the e100 driver from Intel isn't mii
register aware. Meaning mii-tool/mii-diag/etc don't work. For
performance I easily get >12 MB/sec using scp between machines
using those cards with the eepro100 driver.

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