Re: dual-phy (copper & fiber) NIC?

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%rek.tjls.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 01:54:31PM -0800, Aaron Turner wrote:
> Sorry for the slightly OT, but I've run out of ideas...
> 
> I could of sworn about a month ago or so, I found a gigabit NIC (PCI
> Express I think) which offered two copper AND two SFP connectors for
> fiber.   The card had only two ethernet controllers (Marvell I think),
> hence you could only use up to two connectors at any time.  Very
> similuar to many switches which give you the choice of copper or fiber
> but not both (sometimes called "combo ports").

Syskonnect used to make these.  Marvell bought them for their Ethernet
controller design which is the core of the current Marvell chips.  They
may still sell high-end adapters under the Syskonnect brand.

The older Syskonnect adapters ran as "one interface with two PHYs" if
you used Syskonnect's Windows drivers but were actually two complete
interfaces and with the BSD driver it was possible to use both at once.