Gigabit & 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCI adapters

[Daniel Clark]

Just thought I'd report that I recently did a search for Gigabit & 10
Gigabit Ethernet PCI adapters (specifically I was looking for PCI-X, but
I didn't limit the search to that) that don't require nonfree firmware.

I was unable to find any Gigabit ethernet adapters that don't require
nonfree firmware. (There were some that looked good in that linux-libre
didn't strip anything from them, but as far as I could tell those are
only available in integrated on-motherboard configurations.)

I was able to find one 10gbe adapter that as far as I can tell (looked
over the code, searched etc) does not even have the facility to update
firmware - the intel ixge driver (which works with intel-branded cards
as well as sun and ibm branded cards, and perhaps others I didn't find).

Just thought I'd post this here to see if anyone has corrections to this
information before I post to libreplanet hardware pages / suggest our
directory maintainer add the ixge supported cards to the FSF's hardware
directory.

Also if anyone has suggestions for performance tuning with the ixge
driver, we'd love to hear them :-)

Cheers,
-- 
Daniel JB Clark   | Sys Admin, Free Software Foundation
pobox.com/~dclark | http://www.fsf.org/about/staff#danny