One PCIe four-port ethernet card vs Four PCI single port ethernet cards

[venky262]

Hi ,

Have been wondering of setting up a machine with multiple interfaces to different networks. I am wondering which would be the best option in terms of throughput and avoid contention between flows going through different interfaces.

Option 1 is to use a four-port ethernet card which plugs into the PCIe interface.

Option 2 is to use four standard PCI ethernet cards.

I haven't found an exact reference that would help. I will likely run all interfaces with gigabit ports, and would in cases even push these interfaces to the max as I will run some experiments from time to time.

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

Generally a 4 port PCIe x4 card has no issues at gigabit speeds. 10GE can be limited on quad port cards.

 

[venky262]

Generally a 4 port PCIe x4 card has no issues at gigabit speeds. 10GE can be limited on quad port cards.

Thanks! As a general rule, what would be the ceiling of the throughput that I can achieve through PCIe x4 card? i.e., the throughput that I can achieve from the system board to the PCIe slot.

 

[kanewolf]

Depends on the generation of the PCIe bus on the motherboard and card. Wiki has an estimate -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions Remember that is in GigaBYTES. Your 4 port card only generates 0.5GB/s (4Gb) ...

 

[venky262]

Depends on the generation of the PCIe bus on the motherboard and card. Wiki has an estimate -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions Remember that is in GigaBYTES. Your 4 port card only generates 0.5GB/s (4Gb) ...

Thanks! Much appreciated!