[SOLVED] Which Ethernet connection to use if mb has 2?

[douglasl]

My motherboard comes with 2 Ethernet connectors, an Intel I219-V and an I211-AT. Which one is better to use? I can't find anything in the mb manual to give me any guidance, other than that the I219-V is always listed first. (I'm too far from my router to do any aggregation.) Thank you!

 

[Isokolon]

according to https://blog.kylemanna.com/hardware/intel-nic-igb-i211-vs-e1000e-i219/

• Receive Side Scaling (RSS) support on both up to two RSS queues per TX and RX (didn’t check if each driver supports them). Interestingly, the I210 supports up to four RSS queues and may result in better performance at very high load.
• Jumbo Frames up to 9KB on I219 and up to 9.5kB on the I211.
• Low power features on the I219 claims to consume less then 1 mW with Ethernet cable disconnected (perfect for not using it).
• Receive Side Coalescing (RSC) not available on either.
• Direct Cache Access (DCA) is available on the I211.
• CPU Offloading features supported by the I211 include TCP segmentation and various checksums. The I219 only advertises ARP offloading support.
• Virtualization features like VMDq are not supported.
• VLANs are supported.
• Linux PTP is supported by the I211 + igb driver for precision timestamping with IEEE 5188. Verify with ethtool -T eth0.

bottom line: pick whichever fits your cable management better unless one of the features listed is a killer feature for your tasks. 99% of home users won't notice any difference.

 

[thegnomeofold]

Doesn't really matter so much for an average home user, just randomly pick one as both are the same 1Gbit speed.

 

[mixolyd]

I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to update with my experience. I have both on my motherboard and was using I219 because I thought it was newer and better. I just switched to the I211, and my download speed jumped from 60-80mbps to 200mbps which is my max internet speed. I was wondering what the bottleneck was, and it is actually the ethernet device. Both drivers are fully updated, and I used the same cable. I went back and forth several times and confirmed the speed difference Clearly I211 is better for some reason

 

[bandit8623]

i211 vs i210. the 210 is better. the i219 should be better as well.. but drivers make a huge diff.

 

[USAFRet]

i211 vs i210. the 210 is better. the i219 should be better as well.. but drivers make a huge diff.

This is a 3 year old thread.
Don't do that.