What is the best 10/100 NIC that I can buy right now?

[Sgt_Strider]

What is the best NIC that I can buy right now?

[YeOldeStonecat]

3COM 990xp's are quite sweet...but they're meant for servers.

You talking about best NIC's of all NIC's? Or just a NIC for your desktop? For desktop's, just about all of us in the profession prefer 3COM 90X series (the 905's are real popular), or Intel Pro's.

[Kalrog]

For servers, we usually use the Intel Pro 100s...

If you are just getting it for home use, I would go with whatever is on special at your local computer store.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat
3COM 990xp's are quite sweet...but they're meant for servers.

You talking about best NIC's of all NIC's? Or just a NIC for your desktop? For desktop's, just about all of us in the profession prefer 3COM 90X series (the 905's are real popular), or Intel Pro's.

I'm talking about the best NIC for the desktop. I'm not trying to run a server or anything but I would like to get the best performance nic that I can get for the desktop. Which Intel Pro do you recommend? Do you mean the Intel Etherexpress 10/100? For the 3com card, do you mean the 3com 3C905C? Also I have a question about routers. Currently I have a linksys BEFSR41 router and I'm not exactly satisfy with the performance. I know you recommend nexland routers but they're not available in Canada and its going to be pretty hard for me to go online and order it from the U.S. I remember reading that you also recommend Netgear routers and you place them 2nd on your list of good manufacturers of routers. Which netgear router do you recommend? I want to know the model # so that I can go and check up on the specs. Thanks for reading .

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah the Intel Ether Express (I kind of lump them all up as Pro's, just because I've been working with them since the old Pro 10 meggers)

3COM 905 is pretty much my fave...don't worry about which sub-model, the basic NIC is the same across the board, just some have wake up on lane and remote monitoring features, etc, which you'll never use. (for large enterprise setups). It's my most widely used NIC...love them. And the support is great. Lifetime NIC! On the rare chance of failure, painless RMA process...brand new one on it's way. Great drivers, and GUI diagnostic utility.

But first, let me ask, what is it you are looking for? Not satisfied with the performance...in what area? Are you a hard core gamer? Do you run something like a website? Large amount of computers on this LAN sharing the broadband (like an office)? How is the current Linksys letting you down?

As for "any other brand"....nope....if you're concerned about gaming, performance, etc, there is a good difference between 3COM or Intel, vs "all the others" which I generally lump together as generic. Linksys, Kingston, Realtek, SMC, DLink, bah.... they do the job, but I can tell you, I go to a lot of LAN parties, so the connection is equal across across the board...and you can always see the computers with good NIC's, enjoying nice low pings, and there's always some people pinging really high....I always make a point to go see what their hardware is, and yup, it'll have a junker NIC in it.

But again, to be fair, even a 10 dollar NIC will do the job just the same as a high end NIC for simple internet use...because your broadband connection is the bottleneck there (usually below 1.5 megs at best). 90% of the users out there don't even maximize the performance of a 10 dollar NIC.

Now for your router, if you upgrade to the Netgear, yeah it's a more stable router in my opinion, and a little faster. The switch is faster on the LAN side. Two years ago I would have said it was immensely better than the Linksys, but over the past year, Linksys has done a tremendous job on their firmware updates, and it's gotten to be quite rock solid now. I have the Netgear RT314 sitting around somewhere, don't use it anymore, think it's in the back of my Jeep in my spare parts kit. I think it's disco'd, replaced by the RP314 these days. I'm kind of done with Netgear for a while, had too many problems with their RMA process and support, which as a reseller, is not acceptable by me.

I can tell you the best router that I had...performance wise...and it's performance lead was HUGE! The Netopia R910. Absolutely rock stable, and fast. If you need LAN transfer speeds, you'll want a good separate switch to uplink it to, as it only comes with 10 meg hub on the LAN side, like most upper end routers do.

Also SonicWall SOHO3 is a great one....also a bit pricey...but top performance.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat
Yeah the Intel Ether Express (I kind of lump them all up as Pro's, just because I've been working with them since the old Pro 10 meggers)

3COM 905 is pretty much my fave...don't worry about which sub-model, the basic NIC is the same across the board, just some have wake up on lane and remote monitoring features, etc, which you'll never use. (for large enterprise setups). It's my most widely used NIC...love them. And the support is great. Lifetime NIC! On the rare chance of failure, painless RMA process...brand new one on it's way. Great drivers, and GUI diagnostic utility.

But first, let me ask, what is it you are looking for? Not satisfied with the performance...in what area? Are you a hard core gamer? Do you run something like a website? Large amount of computers on this LAN sharing the broadband (like an office)? How is the current Linksys letting you down?

As for "any other brand"....nope....if you're concerned about gaming, performance, etc, there is a good difference between 3COM or Intel, vs "all the others" which I generally lump together as generic. Linksys, Kingston, Realtek, SMC, DLink, bah.... they do the job, but I can tell you, I go to a lot of LAN parties, so the connection is equal across across the board...and you can always see the computers with good NIC's, enjoying nice low pings, and there's always some people pinging really high....I always make a point to go see what their hardware is, and yup, it'll have a junker NIC in it.

But again, to be fair, even a 10 dollar NIC will do the job just the same as a high end NIC for simple internet use...because your broadband connection is the bottleneck there (usually below 1.5 megs at best). 90% of the users out there don't even maximize the performance of a 10 dollar NIC.

Now for your router, if you upgrade to the Netgear, yeah it's a more stable router in my opinion, and a little faster. The switch is faster on the LAN side. Two years ago I would have said it was immensely better than the Linksys, but over the past year, Linksys has done a tremendous job on their firmware updates, and it's gotten to be quite rock solid now. I have the Netgear RT314 sitting around somewhere, don't use it anymore, think it's in the back of my Jeep in my spare parts kit. I think it's disco'd, replaced by the RP314 these days. I'm kind of done with Netgear for a while, had too many problems with their RMA process and support, which as a reseller, is not acceptable by me.

I can tell you the best router that I had...performance wise...and it's performance lead was HUGE! The Netopia R910. Absolutely rock stable, and fast. If you need LAN transfer speeds, you'll want a good separate switch to uplink it to, as it only comes with 10 meg hub on the LAN side, like most upper end routers do.

Also SonicWall SOHO3 is a great one....also a bit pricey...but top performance.

I am a hardcore gamer and I would like to know what is the best nic for gaming. I'm still thinking over whether to get the Intel Etherexpress 10/100 or the 3com 3c905. The 3com is $10 more expensive than the INtel but I don't mind. So honestly tell me, which one will give me the lowest possible ping? Thx

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
I am a hardcore gamer and I would like to know what is the best nic for gaming. I'm still thinking over whether to get the Intel Etherexpress 10/100 or the 3com 3c905. The 3com is $10 more expensive than the INtel but I don't mind. So honestly tell me, which one will give me the lowest possible ping? Thx

I have a 10/100 Intel in one rig, the rest are 3COMs....and the Intel can get 3 or so less ms on the same network.

[Sgt_Strider]

Alright thx for your help. How do you think the nexland router compare to the Netopia router that you mention?

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
Alright thx for your help. How do you think the nexland router compare to the Netopia router that you mention?

For 1/3 of the price, almost as good.

The Nexland has an easy to use web admin utility, just like the Linksys and most others...so setup and config is a breeze, since it's designed for the "average home networking newbie". It also has the fastest 10/100 switch that I've had in a home router....very fast.

The Netopia, you setup via the old fashioned Telnet, or Hyberterminal via a serial cable, since it's marketed to be setup by the IT guy, not the home user. No web interface (unless they recently came out with one, back when I had it, they were piddling around with one that they were thinking of doing). Like many higher end routers, it only has a 4 port 10 base hub built in...since they are usually in more business like setups where it's simply uplinked to an existing large switch. That's only a concern for you if you do large file transfers across your LAN....for gaming, it's still a solid switch, I never had issues with ping on it...no matter how many players I added to may LAN, playing out through the router...no increase in pings until I saturated by WAN connection. Rock rock rock stable router that could easily handle whatever I threw at it.

[Sgt_Strider]

Alright thx for the info .