[K12OSN] Recommended Gigabit Network card?

[William Fragakis]

We used to serve 10 users on boxes just like this. Now it's a client...
(I'm feeling even older.)

In my experience, gigabit all the way to the client does help video
performance when using highly network intensive programs (ie Flash on
Youtube).

The onboard Intel is quite adequate (you can run compiz on the clients).
If you are squeezed for cash, you could ebay the ATIs and use the
onboard. OTOH, having DVI output probably gives you more options in the
future when 22" LCDs are $100.

DRBL is a great suggestion. There's a LiveCD that works quite well if
you want to give it a quick spin. 

Glad you got a good surprise when you opened your donations. Mostly, I'd
just find dust bunnies that would make me sneeze.

Regards,
William

On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 12:00 -0400, k12osn-request at redhat.com wrote:
> Message: 11
> Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 10:37:19 -0400
> From: Jeff Siddall <news at siddall.name>
> To: k12osn at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] Recommended Gigabit Network card?
> Message-ID: <4CA5F21F.3050906 at siddall.name>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> On 09/30/2010 05:47 PM, Joseph Bishay wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
> > 
> > Well it seems the issue has been resolved on its own!  I finally was
> > able to crack one of the machines open, and lo-and-behold, it
> already
> > had a gigabit card on-board!
> > 
> > Specifically the Intel 82573E gigabit NIC (more info:
> > http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=26550 ).  Granted it doesn't
> > support Jumbo frames, but that would be looking the gift-horse in
> the
> > mouth :)
> > 
> > I guess I never expected that we'd get freely donated machines at
> the
> > level of having onboard gigabit so I was assuming the worst. These
> > machines are a bit more powerful than I thought -- Pentium 4 3.2
> Ghz,
> > 1 GB RAM, 250 GB SATA drives, gigabit NIC, onboard Intel 945 g/p
> > graphics AND an installed ATI Radeon X1600 256 MB video card with
> DVI
> > output. New keyboards, mice, and 19" NEC LCDs to go with them!
> 
> Heck, that could be an LTSP server!
> 
> > So now that the gigabit issue has been resolved, the next issue to
> ask is:
> > 1) Which video card to use? Onboard Intel or ATI card?
> 
> If you can get the ATI to work is is the far superior card.
> 
> > 2) With such a machine, would it be beneficial to run something
> > locally? Firefox perhaps?
> 
> Yeah -- everything!  Seriously, I would consider DRBL:
> 
> http://drbl.sourceforge.net/
> 
> 
>