# Intel Pro/1000 Network Adapter Differences?

## jfave

I am looking to upgrade my machines, one is my *cough* server (PIII 650), the other is a windows box... 

So I need some advice, other then the obvious oem/refurb/box version and the dual/four port versions I dont know the differences. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

links:

Intel PRO/1000 MT Four Port Server Adapter, Model PWLA8494MT- OEM

Intel PRO/1000 MT Four Port Server Adapter, Model PWLA8494MT

 Intel PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter, Model PWLA8492MT  OEM

 Intel PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter, Model PWLA8492MT

Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop Network Adapter, Model PWLA8390MT  OEM

 Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop Network Adapter - Retail Box Model# PWLA8390MT

REFURBISHED: Intel® PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter Model PWLA8490MT (OEM, BAREBONE)

Intel PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter, Model PWLA8490MT  OEM

Intel PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter, Model PWLA8490MT

 Intel PRO/1000 XT Server Adapter, Model PWLA8490XT  OEM

And while I am at it, any good suggestions for atleast an 8 port Gigabit switch(under $200). TIA

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## Petyr

All those cards depend greatly on what the server is going to be doing. Basically as the price of the card increases, more crap is done directly on the card (rather than on the CPU). Also you get some extra things like SNMP features and crap like that. The snmp stuff is just so you can set features on the cards for a large collection of them, from one station. Kinda like "I want to enable some oddball QoS function on all cards in this server group" or something like that.

Depending on what you're doing you may or may not need the quad port or dual port stuff. Also keep in mind that a good collection of servers already have Gb cards built in (i.e. just about every dell computer now-a-days has Gb Eth built in)

Sometimes the higher end server cards have some ipsec chips on there as well, to make things a little easier on the server when it's routing a lot of encrypted traffic.

hth,

Petyr

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## jfave

Thanks for the reply. I unfortunately have no use for the dual/quad port for my machine. I totally agree with having more computing power on the NIC. I have bad memories of trying to get winmodems to work with redhat. 

Is it worth the money to put a Server card in my machine if it is for home server use (should have mentioned that earlier) ? What sort of performance hit would I see in the different cards? Would it be significant?

I would ideally like to map several drives from the server to the win box... making it (hopefully) transparent. I also have several 100mb machines on the network. I want everything to run at full speed and have zero bottlenecks.

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## Suicidal

You also want to check with the more advanced NIC's whether the Linux kernel driver even supports the hardware offloads. My old 3c990 typhoon never supportted the TCP seg or the IPsec offloads. 

Look in /usr/src/linux/Documentation for docs on the nics you are looking at and what advanced features are supported by the kernel driver. 

Most likely you will only find TX/RX offloads but it makes a substancial difference on a big transfer. On windows my integrated nic will use 70% cpu (on a opteron 146) my old and dead 3com 3c990 used  about  ~5% on the same file on a p3 800. I miss that NIC.  :Crying or Very sad: 

As far as the dual port NIC's you are right you probably dont need them unless you have multiple subnets or a non blocking switch that is capable of server load balancing or trunking.

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## jfave

thanks for the tip! I'll check that after work.

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## jfave

the file has LOTS of good info. Here is what I found to be relevent:

```
Supported Adapters

==================

The following Intel network adapters are compatible with the drivers in this

release:

   Controller  Adapter Name                         Board IDs

   ----------  ------------                         ---------

   82542       PRO/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter      700262-xxx, 717037-xxx

   82543       PRO/1000 F Server Adapter            738640-xxx, A38888-xxx

   82543       PRO/1000 T Server Adapter            A19845-xxx, A33948-xxx

   82544       PRO/1000 XT Server Adapter           A51580-xxx

   82544       PRO/1000 XF Server Adapter           A50484-xxx

   82544       PRO/1000 T Desktop Adapter           A62947-xxx

   82540       PRO/1000 MT Desktop Adapter          A78408-xxx

   82541                                            C91016-xxx

   82545       PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter           A92165-xxx

   82546       PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter A92111-xxx

   82545       PRO/1000 MF Server Adapter           A91622-xxx

   82545       PRO/1000 MF Server Adapter(LX)       A91624-xxx

   82546       PRO/1000 MF Dual Port Server Adapter A91620-xxx

```

```
Additional Configurations

=========================

  Jumbo Frames

  ------------

  The driver supports Jumbo Frames for all adapters except 82542-based

  adapters. Jumbo Frames support is enabled by changing the MTU to a value

  larger than the default of 1500. Use the ifconfig command to increase the

  MTU size. For example:

        ifconfig ethx mtu 9000 up

  The maximum MTU setting for Jumbo Frames is 16110. This value coincides

  with the maximum Jumbo Frames size of 16128.

  NOTE: Jumbo Frames are supported at 1000 Mbps only. Using Jumbo Frames at

  10 or 100 Mbps may result in poor performance or loss of link.

```

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## jfave

more info, from the Intel site:

http://support.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-012904.htm

and download the linux drivers:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Product_Search.asp?Prod_nm=pro*1000

driver info:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/Detail_Desc.asp?agr=Y&Inst=Yes&ProductID=841&DwnldID=2897

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