Subject: A good, cheap, wire-speed PCI-e NIC for NetBSD?
To: None <tech-net@netbsd.org>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu>
List: tech-net
Date: 11/04/2005 11:43:01
Any recommendations for PCI-e NICs for eventual use with NetBSD?
I'm looking for:

    * Desktop pricing
    * Wire speed Tx and Rx (simultaneously)
    * At least one of: datasheets, existing NetBSD PCI driver
      for related PCI, chip FreeBSD driver.
    * IP/TCP checksum offload
    * TCP Segmentation Offload (Tso, aka Large Send).

Intel "desktop" PCI-e NICs are scheduled to hit market this month; but
aren't shipping quite yet.  I know Reatek has a chip, related to their
existing PCI/cardbus chips but I haven't yet found a NIC with chip.

The broadcom 5721 doesn't have desktop pricing, but neither of the
{net,free}BSD drivers can push the send path above ~90 Mbyte/sec.

I'm left wonedring about the follwoing:
    * D-link DGE-560T, which has some close relative of
      the Sundance/Tamarak MAC. Datasheets (and FreeBSD-4 drivers)
      are allegedly available from the Taiwanese chip vendor;
or

   * The S&K SK-9E22, which is yet another sk/skc combo, of which
     I vaguely heard Thor commenting about compatibiliity issues
     with various variants (Marvell? I forget).
     SysKonnect provides  binary-only FreeBSD-5 drivers, and a
     Linux source driver from which TSO support could be
     reverse-engineered into our sk/skc code.


Anyone know if either of those are close to working with existing
NetBSD drivers?  With TCP checksum offload?  With TSO??  Any of the
usual suspects interested in helping make them work?