Which NIC?

[Nowhere]

I'm building finally some small network here (just two pc's initially; fast one for work, movies, games, mostly Windows, also BeOS; and one slow, always on machine, consuming much less power, downloading things, running on Linux or BSD) and I have almost everything except network cards. And honestly I don't know if I should do what the masses do and buy some Realtek or...should I buy something "better", but used/retired so also cheap (I'm looking right now a these auctions: 1 , 2 , 3 ; (yes, I know, you don't read polish...but the names and photos are universal I think )
Of course, I have here some advisors...but I want to know what MURC thinks about the issue. Namely: if I want good quality, performance and compatybility with most OSes, should I go with cheap Realtek or perhaps something from 3com or Intel would be better?

[az]

I'd check driver availability for BeOS etc. first.

AZ

[Nowhere]

Ok, I checked and all of them work under BeOS, so that's not an issue.

[Evildead666]

I've never ever had any problems with 3Com 3C90x series of cards. They install and are directly supported in most OS's.

Red Hat found it straight away, as did 2000 and xp.
Looks like and older revision tho, they have much smaller BGA chips now.

[Kruzin]

Yep. 3com all the way. 3c90x are bulletproof. Never had a prob with one, while both Intel and Realtek have both given me driver hassles in the past (more Realtek).

[UtwigMU]

Bro's box with SiS onboard LAN that would sometimes conflict with router (box cannot access internet, while the other box with 3COM 3c920 onboard LAN can, reset on router fixes it). I also heard of another person, which has same problem with same board (ECS K7S5A Pro).

The Realtek 10 Euros NIC works fine (although I didn't test it a lot, since I used old ISA 3COM 10Mb NIC for modem before I got another box and networked it, and now sits on shelf, since both boxes have onboard LAN.

IMO get a Realtek, if it doesn't work well or has problems (very unlikely), then get a 3Com or Intel NIC.

[Wombat]

Avoid RealTek. They're flaky, and they tend to rely more on your processor than the other cards. Some of their chipsets are truly awful, and also in my experience they are laggier than other cards.

[Taz]

My first choice would be the 3Com but those Compaq badged Intel cards should be pretty good

[Jammrock]

3Com 3C905C-TX is the staple NIC. I have a 3CR990-97-TX, which offloads more of the network functions to the NIC and will do IPSEC encryption on the NIC for corporate VPNs.

If you're working on getting a new mobo, get one with a Gb CSA NIC from Intel. It will have it's own bus on the mobo and works like a champ, according to people that have them.

Jammrock

[UtwigMU]

Because the secondary box will proabably be running multiple downloads and uploads 24/7 (torrent, ed2k,...), you might want to get an Intel or 3Com NIC.

If it's a regular desktop, Realtek would be fine.

[Wombat]

No, not if he's playing online games. The last time I replaced a Realtek with a 3com, the ping went from 25ms to 15ms, average.

[leech]

I have 3Com's throughout my entire network, and they're rock solid. Though I did have one 3c905C that had some issues. Though I seem to think it was the motherboard's fault, because I tried the same card in a different PC and it worked flawlessly...

Leeh

[Ribbit]

Yep, 3Com's my first choice too. Though I remember having issues with my 3C905C on BeOS (mind you, I never got that OS running properly anyway). Another 3Com issue is that they tend to set very high PCI latencies, which is good for performance but bad if you're trying to do serious audio/video work or whatever.

But I still say go 3Com

[Kurt]

A cheap 3com is better than an "expensive" Realtek (like D-Link).

Here's a little funny thing from the realtek 8139 drivers source (BSD or sth):

/*
* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
*
* For transmission, the chip offers a series of four TX descriptor
* registers. Each transmit frame must be in a contiguous buffer, aligned
* on a longword (32-bit) boundary. This means we almost always have to
* do mbuf copies in order to transmit a frame, except in the unlikely
* case where a) the packet fits into a single mbuf, and b) the packet
* is 32-bit aligned within the mbuf's data area. The presence of only
* four descriptor registers means that we can never have more than four
* packets queued for transmission at any one time.
*
* Reception is not much better. The driver has to allocate a single large
* buffer area (up to 64K in size) into which the chip will DMA received
* frames. Because we don't know where within this region received packets
* will begin or end, we have no choice but to copy data from the buffer
* area into mbufs in order to pass the packets up to the higher protocol
* levels.
*
* It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent
* performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or
* some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
*
* On the bright side, the 8139 does have a built-in PHY, although
* rather than using an MDIO serial interface like most other NICs, the
* PHY registers are directly accessible through the 8139's register
* space. The 8139 supports autonegotiation, as well as a 64-bit multicast
* filter.
*
* The 8129 chip is an older version of the 8139 that uses an external PHY
* chip. The 8129 has a serial MDIO interface for accessing the MII where
* the 8139 lets you directly access the on-board PHY registers. We need
* to select which interface to use depending on the chip type.
*/

[Byock]

Bah, You cannot go wrong with the 3Com, or the Intel nic. Both work great. The Realtek is FLAKY.