NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi All,
For my NASLite-M2 box I have a rock solid P4 motherboard that has an embedded Intel Pro/1000 NIC. So far I have chosen to disable the embedded NIC and run an Intel Pro/1000 PCI-X card in a 32bit slot. Although not ideal in a standard PCI slot, I thought it might be better than the embedded card.

Any opinion on which card in theory "should" provide better performance?

-John

Just try it and see!

Mike

I was hoping someone had an educated opinion before I went through the trouble....

OK, I will give you my educated opinion but in the end it will still come down to you trying it and seeing if the performance improves.

Some motherboards have multiple PCI buses, most of these are servers. This segments traffice on the PCI bus and allows for better performance. There is a chance that there is a separate bus for the on board devices and another for the PCI bus external, not likely though.

Changing the NIC is as simple as selecting either first or last NIC in the menu and rebooting. If NL sees both NICs then you are set to see if performance improves. My guess is that it won't but YMMV.

Happy?

Mike

That's what I was hoping for. Very helpful.

Now that wasn't so hard was it?

Thank you,
John

1. I don't get payed for the support I provide here, I do it out of kindness.

2. I am typing on my tablet as I have just moved across the country.

3. My girlfriend and I have just had the worst month ever and I am really tired/ irritable.
Seriously, not joking here.

4. I am inputting via a pen on tablet.

So yes it was troublesome, and my original advice is still my same advice.

Mike

So I tested based on Mike's suggestions I tested and found that the internal NIC was about 25% slower than the PCI-X based NIC. I'll be disabling the internal NIC and motherboard going forward.

-John

Not really a surprise since the PCIx NIC by Intel is a hard card to beat for performance.

The on board NICs are usually based on a Realtek chipset which is OK at best.

Mike

Both the PCI-X and embedded NICs are Intel Pro/1000. I thought the test would be closer given I have to run the PCI-X card in a 32bit slot but there was a noticeable performance difference between them.

Not having any hardware specifics it is hard to get a total picture of the potential performance gains/losses. It is likely that there is a PCI bridge isolating the external bus from that of the internal one, this is where the difference comes in. You other option is to move the RAID card to a different slot and see if performance improves with the on board NIC.

Mike