PC Peripherals Intel Quad NIC availability

maddy_in65

maddy_in65

Forerunner
The 2nd WAN circuit is giving some issues on Pfsense since last few days and same WAN link works fine on Dlink router. I am looking for replacing Dual port NIC with Quad port NIC in my pfsense build.
I bought Intel Dual NIC earlier from Ebay but now that options is not available. Does anyone know where I can get cheap Intel NIC online in India.
It seems Intel I340/I350 are good options but don't find it online easily.
maddy_in65 said:
The 2nd WAN circuit is giving some issues on Pfsense since last few days and same WAN link works fine on Dlink router. I am looking for replacing Dual port NIC with Quad port NIC in my pfsense build.
I bought Intel Dual NIC earlier from Ebay but now that options is not available. Does anyone know where I can get cheap Intel NIC online in India.
It seems Intel I340/I350 are good options but don't find it online easily.
Click to expand...
Any feedback Guys.
@vivek.krishnan
 
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maddy_in65 said:
I am looking for replacing Dual port NIC with Quad port NIC in my pfsense build.
Click to expand...
Apologies for the dumb question, but in this NIC is each ethernet port a separate network connection or is it just for additional bandwidth?
I was wondering if this could be used to connect (aggregate / fail over) multiple internet connections.
 
bobbyprajan said:
Seeen some in OLX, they were not cheap though. Are you having high internet bandwidth that requires such hardware ?
Click to expand...
I am having 2x100Mbps connections.

rahuljawale said:
I have a single port version of this. I had bought it for DIY OPNSense build. But then the host machine died (unrelated event). You can have it if you want.


https://servercart.in/product/dell-intel-quad-port-server-adapter-pci-e-pro-1000-vt-p-n-0yt674/ I don't know how reliable they are, but worth a shot!
Click to expand...

I am looking for Quad NiC as MB has only one PCIE slot. Some google searches landed on same page and I have same thought about their reliability. Anyone here dealt with them earlier?
JMP said:
Apologies for the dumb question, but in this NIC is each ethernet port a separate network connection or is it just for additional bandwidth?
I was wondering if this could be used to connect (aggregate / fail over) multiple internet connections.
Click to expand...
Yes right, each port can be configured as separate network and also for aggregating BW for uplinks but managed switch is needed in this case.
 
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bobbyprajan said:
I have 2 wan connections, 150 Mbps and 60 Mbps. I use the single integrated Realtek NIC with VLANs for all my LAN and WAN. With 200 Mbps WAN bandwidth there is no need of such expensive hardware. If you have plans to upgrade bandwidth above 500 Mbps, then ok. I use Opnsense btw
Click to expand...
Yes I am doing VLAN on LAN interface. One port (WAN) on current NIC seems failing which is causing issues with WAN connection. We did extensive troubleshooting with help of ISP but it seems problem with card and it is failing and looking for replacement card.
 
maddy_in65 said:
The 2nd WAN circuit is giving some issues on Pfsense since last few days and same WAN link works fine on Dlink router. I am looking for replacing Dual port NIC with Quad port NIC in my pfsense build.
I bought Intel Dual NIC earlier from Ebay but now that options is not available. Does anyone know where I can get cheap Intel NIC online in India.
It seems Intel I340/I350 are good options but don't find it online easily.

Any feedback Guys.
@vivek.krishnan
Click to expand...
I have 4 X RTL giga NICs from an older pfsense build.
THey used to work just fine on symmetric gigabit.
Unless you have a limitation of PCI ports, just get single port cards.. you can take mine if you want .

Having said that, I moved away from software routers a few years back.. unless there is a very specific need , hardware routers will be cheaper and offer better performance for a home network
 
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maddy_in65 said:
The 2nd WAN circuit is giving some issues on Pfsense since last few days and same WAN link works fine on Dlink router. I am looking for replacing Dual port NIC with Quad port NIC in my pfsense build.
I bought Intel Dual NIC earlier from Ebay but now that options is not available. Does anyone know where I can get cheap Intel NIC online in India.
It seems Intel I340/I350 are good options but don't find it online easily.

Any feedback Guys.
@vivek.krishnan
Click to expand...

Getting hold of these is not an issue - pricing is. If you had picked up earlier for 8K (which I believe was the price then), now they are nothing short of upwards of 12-15K. You need to look at server spares dealers.

I have just maybe 2 pcs of the quad port as spares with me, I think. I will need to check.
bobbyprajan said:
Seeen some in OLX, they were not cheap though. Are you having high internet bandwidth that requires such hardware ?
Click to expand...

Its not about bandwidth only, additional features like hardware offload etc which will offload certain tasks to the NIC itself. Also, last time I checked, BSD had reliability issues with Realtek but this was due to version 11 of FreeBSD, but 12 had proper support for Realtek. I still prefer Intel over Realtek.
rahuljawale said:
I have a single port version of this. I had bought it for DIY OPNSense build. But then the host machine died (unrelated event). You can have it if you want.


https://servercart.in/product/dell-intel-quad-port-server-adapter-pci-e-pro-1000-vt-p-n-0yt674/ I don't know how reliable they are, but worth a shot!
Click to expand...

Reliability of the NIC (apart from the usual age factor) is mainly to do with where it was used and if there was any power surges etc. We used to run around a dozen pfsense firewalls and this was my experience.
JMP said:
Apologies for the dumb question, but in this NIC is each ethernet port a separate network connection or is it just for additional bandwidth?
I was wondering if this could be used to connect (aggregate / fail over) multiple internet connections.
Click to expand...

These are 4 NICs in a single package. You can keep each on its own network (for multiple LANs OR multiple WANs) but would need to use a proper OS which can do this. For example, you can use Sophos/Untangle Home editions OR pfsense/opnsense/openwrt/Nethserver/Zentyal OR even roll your Linux distro and do iptables.

I am assuming here aggregate means you want to use multiple internet connections into ONE - you will need to use roundrobin on a router level OR you can install a software like Speedify or ConnectifyMAX on Windows. Failover will require it to be done at router level.
 
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superczar said:
I have 4 X RTL giga NICs from an older pfsense build.
THey used to work just fine on symmetric gigabit.
Unless you have a limitation of PCI ports, just get single port cards.. you can take mine if you want .

Having said that, I moved away from software routers a few years back.. unless there is a very specific need , hardware routers will be cheaper and offer better performance for a home network
Click to expand...
Thanks for feedback. I am Checking with Vivek on this and I will let you know in case your NIC is needed.
 
While smart switch works. Does anyone have any real-world benchmarks of running iperf over it (both down and up simultaneously)?
Can you peak out 1gbit up and down simultaneously while using a single port in the VLAN switch?
 
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what_a_life said:
While smart switch works. Does anyone have any real-world benchmarks of running iperf over it (both down and up simultaneously)?
Can you peak out 1gbit up and down simultaneously while using a single port in the VLAN switch?
Click to expand...
A smart switch is a cheaper, rather than high-performance solution compared to discrete intel NIC. On the other hand, for a dedicated high-performance pfsense box (which would sill be cheaper than diy pc + nic + ram), i prefer a tailor made machine like this one https://www.crazypi.com/firewall-pc-4-lan which has 4 integrated (Intel) NIC and will work for most of the firewall distributions out there. This is small and is very power efficent.
 
what_a_life said:
While smart switch works. Does anyone have any real-world benchmarks of running iperf over it (both down and up simultaneously)?
Can you peak out 1gbit up and down simultaneously while using a single port in the VLAN switch?
Click to expand...
yes - tested /used in production at home for years .. 1gbps symmetrical works abdsolutely fine for al clients
My home network is a legacy retrofit so there are clients with up to 5-6 phyiscal switches between them and the router OS (i5 9th gen virtualized). Speeds remain the same and latency is sub 1ms
 
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