Suggestion for NIC Card?

[ahartman]

I'm getting cable modem service in the very near future.

For $50, the cable company will sell me an Intel Pro/100+ card. I talked to tech support and they suggested a 3com. Anything 10 (or 100) Base T should work.

I don't know anything about NICs but I'm guessing I can get one for under $50 shopping for myself.

Can anyone suggest one? It'll be going on a single computer, no network (except for cable modem). See specs below for my computer.

Thanks in advance!

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PIII @ 550
IWill Motherboard
VIA Chipset
128Meg
G400 DH 32MB (5.41 Drivers)
DirectX 7.0
SB Live! Value
8x DVD (Toshiba)
6x4x24 CDRW (Sony)
Optiquest V95 19"
HP 812C Color Ink Jet
Microtek flatbed scanner
Intellimouse Explorer
Surround Sound w/two subwoofers
AND WAY TOO MANY GAMES!!!

[Guyver]

Stay with or ahead of the times...
www.buycomp.com - 3Com 3CR990 3-DES, IPSEC offloaded to card using Windows 2000, IP packet routing (I can't remember which layer), is done at the card level as well.

Price - about $85 USD.
Value - A little more performance over a regular NIC that has the processor calculate everything...

Guyv


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OK, Here's the rig...

ABIT BE6
PC Power & Cooling 425W ATX
PIII650E@866 (1.65V) with Alpha P3125S Cooler and 2 27CFM 4500RPM+ Fans
2xVantec Slot Coolers (40CFM each)
2x128MB PC133HSDRAM
2xQuantum Atlas 10K Ultra160/m 18.2GB Drives
Adaptec ASC-29160 Ultra160/m controller
Matrox G400MAX (not OC'd)
SBLive!Retail
3Com 3CR990-TX-95 NIC
3Com USRobotics 56K Voice Faxmodem Pro (USB/Serial)
HP Deskjet 895CXi (USB/Parallel)
HP 6200Cse Scanner (USB/SCSI)
Iomega ZIP 100 ATAPI, HP 8200i ATAPI
Matshita 3X DVDROM ATAPI
Kenwood 52X TrueX Ultra SCSI
Cambridge Soundworks DTT2500 Dolby Digital Sound System

Did I get too much? No!
Did I spend too much? (Total package about 5.5KUSD) - I'd say that's a Yes!
Am I having too much fun? Absolutely!

[RoGuE]

The Netgear FA310TX is a good cheap 10/100mbit NIC.

Guyver, 2xQuantum Atlas 10K Ultra160/m 18.2GB Drives??? Ouch, expensive

[Guyver]

Yup! - Average cost $600 each...

But damn do they fly.....

[Mark F]

No problems with a few Linksys 100NLEs here. About $20(or less) USD.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a DVD...
and burped out a movie

[Dyre]

My NetGear NIC is pretty nice... No problems here

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PIII 450 @ 504
generic BX motherboard
G400 MAX : )
GlobalWin VOS32!
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 33
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 66
Creative 36x CD-ROM
96 megs PC100 RAM
128 megs PC133 ECC RAM
NetGear 10/100
Soundblaster 32 AWE
Diamond SupraExpress 56k
Logitech Wireless Desktop (best $50 ive ever spent)
1 92mm Sunon Fan
4 80mm Sunon Fan's

[Jammrock]

I use a LinkSYS LNE 10/100 NIC and it runs as fast as any other NIC will on a home network. You can pick them up at any local store for around $20. They are stable, fast, dirt cheap and have great drivers for most OS's, including Win2k.

Since cable modems run off 10 Mb speeds there is no need to get a fancy $50-85 NIC. The expensive IP packet routing NIC's are designed more for servers and won't net you any significant speed increases on your cable modem.

If you are going to hook up multiple computers to the cable modem I would suggest getting a switch instead of a hub. Some of my friends have DSL and they saw a huge performance increase when they switch from a hub to a switch.

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[cjolley]

Linksys 10/100 and 5 port switch here. works great.
chuck

[shaqdaddy]

ever considered the 3com 3c509b (not 905b)... you should be able to get them for around $5 (i got 3 for $5 cdn each at some telephone warehouse), they give a decent 1 mbit/s +-10%... which is still more than enough for the cable modem. even though they're pretty old, they are still reliable and the drivers are very mature, avilible for like every os worth a damn. and since it only takes up a isa slot, it will save ya a valuable pci slot for your whatever card...

this is not a joke.

shaqdaddy

[Jeff]

Does anyone know why a switch would show huge performance increases over a hub?

Thanks, JP

[Jammrock]

I will post a very basic run down (thanks to IceStorm for pointing out the crap).

Hub's are broadcast/repeater based equipment. When a computer sends packets (information) out to the network, a hub will broadcast that information to all of the active ports. Hubs are also not full-duplex, so it can only send OR receive. The backplane, or internal bandwidth, on a hub is equal to the maximum transfer rate of the ports. So a 10/100 Mb hub will have a backplane of 100 Mb, which is shared by all ports.

Switches use a, you guessed it, a switching based technology (the big, extremely expensive Layer 3/4 'switches' have some routing intelligence to them). Switches create a dedicated line from one computer to another, so other network traffic will not slow down the trasfer. Switches can operate at full-duplex, meaning they can send and receive at the same time without causing collisions. Switches normally have a backplane, or internal bandwidth, much greater than a single port can handle. So a 5-port switch can have as much as a 1 Gb backplane. Switches should always be much faster than the hub counterpart.

For a very simple home network a hub will do. If you are connecting multiple computers to a cable/DSL modem I have found that switches makes a noticable difference. Since most small switches are practicly the same cost of a 10/100 hub it makes sense to get a switch. Most people will tell you otherwise, but since prices are so low it shouldn't matter.

Hope that helped. If I still have any big time errors in this post, please feel free to flame me.

Jammrock

[This message has been edited by Jammrock (edited 03 March 2000).]

[Askalon]

I use SMC myself. Under $20 and work well.Use 10/100 or 100mbs cards, work much better than just plain 10. If you are going cable and are planning on more than one pc to use the network, try out the new lynksys cable/dsl router at ~$180, but you only use one IP and everyone can use it at the same time. Also I will have a Lynk 4 port with 1 uplink after I get my switch.

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Clayton

[Jammrock]

IceStorm,

I do know how a switch works, not nearly as much as you, but I know the basics. A day or two after I posted my remarks I realized that I botched it up and was mixing up technologies, I just never got around to changing it. I guess I should proof read my stuff better. Because we all know that switches use IPX headers!!! hehehe... yeah, yeah, MAC address.

Sorry if I caused heart problems for you. I'll edit my post and pull the crap from it for you.

Jammrock

PS - Where do you change the receive windows for TCP/IP?

[This message has been edited by Jammrock (edited 03 March 2000).]

[cjolley]

Jammer,
it depends, look here...
http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

chuck

[Jeff]

Thanks for the info. I was just wondering if a switch would help with a work configuration.
We have a T1 coming to a Cisco router and then it goes into a 10 meg hub. From the hub we have our exchange, proxy, SNA sever and our internet boxes pluged in. These server are all multihomed with one connection going to the hub to the T1 and the other on our LAN.
I never though of useing a switch instead of a hub because the T1 is slower than the hub and it seems like that would be the bottleneck.
We are going to a secure setup shortly, but in the mean time would a switch in place of the hub speed things up.

Thanks, Jeff