Re: Netra T1 and Dual Gigabit Ethernet

> Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:12:52 -0700 (PDT)
> From: abs <[email protected]>
> 
> Hello All, I have a netra t1 with openbsd 4.5 installed.  i wanted to install
> a dual gigabit nic on the single available slot.  there is a card available
> for the netra t1: dual gigabit nic + ultra scsi.  the product is X4422A.  
> Would anyone happen to know if this card will work with openbsd?

The card will work with OpenBSD; the ethernet ports are supported by
the cas(4) driver and the scsi ports are handled by siop(4).

That said, unless you really want/need the scsi+ethernet combo, if you
want to be able to boot your machine over gigabit ethernet, or if you
want the hardware to be supported in Solaris, the X4422A is probably
not the optional choice.  The ethernet chip on the board is very
smart, but the way it handles packets doesn't fit very well into the
way OpenBSD handles packets.  As a result the cas(4) driver needs to
do memory copies of packet data that most other drivers don't have to
do.

Almost all gigabit network drivers supported by OpenBSD will work on
sparc64.  If you just want two gigabit ethernet ports, a dual em(4)
(Intel) will probably be a better choice than the X4422A you're
looking at.  Other possibilities are dual bge(4) (Broadcom) or msk(4)
(Marvell/SysKonnect) cards.