[tulip] [Newbie] Multiple DLINK DFE570TX info

[SYLVAIN.COUTANT@illicom.com]

Hello,

I'm new to this mailing and subscribed because I saw some informations about
the DFE570TX card in some previous posts.

I'm planning on buying some of these cards to equip two router/firewall linux
boxes. There will be 2 or 3 such cards into each box.
Each port should be assigned it's own MAC/IP address.

For this I have questions I hope some of you could help about :

- Stability of the card ? Do the tulip drivers work fine and stable with it ?
- Old motherboard support. These boxes will not handle big amount of data,
ethernet ports will be connected to 64, 128 and 256Kbps connections (Internet
lines, RNIS lines, etc.). I am currently using a P133/32Mo and 3 3C509C
cards. It works well but these computers are old and their PCI bus is surrely
not compliant with the latest technologies (ACPI, APIC, etc.) Could this be a
problem ?

By the way, a little bit of education about what happens in this case ? Will
the 4 ports on the same board be assigned the same IRQ ? On newer
motherboard, I'll say no. They should be assigned virtual IRQs (16, 17, 18,
etc.). Am I wrong ? And on older boards (as mine) ?

Any experience on using multiple DFE570TX cards and configuring them using
this tulip driver much appreciated.

Regards,
Sylvain.