[Asterisk-Users] NIC card failure [was: System freeze]

[Steven Critchfield]

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 07:01, mattf wrote:
> It is important to note that cheap nic cards that were really designed for
> 1% utilization on a workstation are not well suited for an Asterisk server
> installation with any kind of VOIP traffic. We foolishly put a Realtek card
> in a test server and after a month literally fried the NIC card, It was
> extremely hot when we took it out after seeing thousands of network errors.
> I would recommend a 3com 905CX NIC card, we have these in all of our
> Asterisk servers and they function beautifully, and I have yet to hear of
> one breaking down uder high traffic. Yes, they cost a lot more than your
> average $4 Realtek card, you can pick them up new for about $20-$30.

Just to try and complete the message here, I have plenty of problems out
of 3com cards. I was at an install where we had to jerk all the 3C905
cards and replace with Davicom cards. 

As for the Realtek cards, that is what is in my office switch with no
problems for over a year. I wonder if the card was made by Realtek, or
just the chip. I have had good experiences with the 8139 chip, and it
may be just better quality cards.

-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>