Gigabit network hardware

[Eric "Shubes"]

Ben Francom wrote:
> On 5/5/07, *David* <daz at damnetwork.net <mailto:daz at damnetwork.net>> wrote:
> 
>     What are the recommendations for switches and NIC's?  Also, how can
>     I tell
>     if my current ethernet cables can hang with the new speeds?
> 
> 
> I recently upgraded at home too.  The NIC I got for the Linux Boxen was
> a Hawking HGA32T.  The drivers are included in the kernel nowadays.  My
> Mac (or should I say Debian PPC) already had a gigabit card embedded.  I
> also got a cheap D-Link DGS-105 Switch.  They are working fine. 
> Checkout this link on Wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet
> It says you can run Gigabit speeds on cat5.  You may be able to get away
> with this in a home office, but I wouldn't risk it in the real world.
> YMMV though.
> 

I have a D-Link DGS-1008D switch I got from newegg some time ago ($40 or
so). It's worked well for me.

I've purchased the cheapest gig-e PCI cards I could find.  The first ones I
got (Zonet from egghead) were about $30. I was (reluctantly) in Fry's last
week and saw (and purchased) a few Trendnet PCI gig-e cards for $13. They
configured themselves on CentOS5 with no problem.

I've seen gig-e work on cat5 cable, but barely (not well at all). Be sure to
use 5e or 6.

HTH
-- 
-Eric 'shubes'