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I Bungled the NIC Model

A project log for pfSense Router/Firewall Install

*on a Dell Dimension E521, lol!

sarandisarandi 02/17/2020 at 18:130 Comments

2020-02-17 - Monday

I had a sneaking suspicion that I bought the wrong (and indeed I did - a first gen/PCIe 1.0a!) model. D'oh! At 2.5 GT/s it still is faster than Gigabit, but that's not the end of the lousy features. The good/funny thing is that it's same vintage/era as the Dell itself. But the card very well might not fit my case, as I for some stupid reason got the "full height" version instead of "low profile". So. We'll see.

https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/demystifying-intel-pro-1000-quad-port-nics/2401

The feature set isn't as broad as subsequent models but it'll have to do until/unless I hit another roadblock, or case-block, as the case may be (too short). Not a huge deal, but not great. I was really looking forward to the onboard traffic-shaping and QoS features.

Here's the official documentation page for the chipset (not the card itself):

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/20720/intel-82571eb-gigabit-ethernet-controller.html

Curiously, this product line goes back to 2005Q3 - yikes.

Card documentation:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/50495/intel-pro-1000-pt-quad-port-low-profile-server-adapter.html

Downloads and Software:

Now we're finally getting somewhere. I'm not sure if pfSense/FreeBSD supports this model, so here's my safety net:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/50495/intel-pro-1000-pt-quad-port-low-profile-server-adapter.html

Complete (OS Independent) Driver Pack:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/22283?product=50495

FreeBSD Driver:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/17509?product=50495


The NIC That Should Have Been:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Low-Profile-Intel-I350-T4-Quad-Port-4-Port-PCI-E-Gigabit-Ethernet-Server-Adapter/324074299402


More resources:

  1. https://www.cnet.com/products/intel-pro-1000-pt-quad-port-server-adapter-network-adapter-39y6138/
  2. Dubious and possibly not obviously helpful; Note - this document shows a quad port NIC but text lists it as a "Interfaces 2x RJ45 ": http://www.arp.com/medias/14309656.pdf

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