nanog mailing list archives
Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses
From: "Paul Wall" <pauldotwall () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:45:52 -0400
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Jim Shankland <nanog () shankland org> wrote:
Nvidia NICs ... as my mother said, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. So the rest is silence.
Hi Jim, My mother wasn't quite so adamant, she just said "don't cuss", so I'll try to keep it clean as I relate my experiences with these "NICs of our affliction". As you're probably aware, Nvidia doesn't really have it together in terms of playing nicely with open source folks. The Linux driver is horribly reverse-engineered and the execution of the implementation is even worse - it couldn't figure out the card's actual MAC address so it assigned a random (and until recently often invalid, with an OUI from bogus space) address. This resulted in some interesting stuff in our switch logs. My recollection is that FreeBSD was no better. We had one batch that refused to pass traffic at 1000/full even when forced. Left me pining for nice reliable stuff like counterfeit Cisco hardware bought from a shady eBay store out of Hong Kong. But I digress. Eventually we voted with our feet; I gave strict instructions to our build guys to stop wasting our time with crummy NICs with no support, and insisted that they pay the small amount of extra money it takes to go with Intel. If you're looking for a funny "prank" to play on your tech staff, speccing a batch of these, sitting back, and watching the fun would get two thumbs up from me... but otherwise steer clear. Drive Slow, Paul Wall
Current thread:
- [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Robert E. Seastrom (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jay R. Ashworth (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Kevin Oberman (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jay R. Ashworth (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Kevin Oberman (Sep 05)
- RE: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Scott Berkman (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Kevin Oberman (Sep 05)
- RE: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Eric Tow (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses bmanning (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jim Shankland (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Paul Wall (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Kevin Oberman (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Christopher LILJENSTOLPE (Sep 08)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jay R. Ashworth (Sep 05)
- RE: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Robert D. Scott (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jon Kibler (Sep 05)
- RE: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Robert D. Scott (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Jon Kibler (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses David W. Hankins (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Robert E. Seastrom (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses David W. Hankins (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Robert E. Seastrom (Sep 05)
- Re: [Fwd:] Nvidia NICs with duplicate mac addresses Alec Berry (Sep 05)