Upgrading to 1GB Ethernet
Articles and Tips: qna
01 Feb 2002
Q.
Our company is considering 1GB Ethernet for our larger servers with 500+ connections attached to Cisco routing hardware. Since our large servers are Dells, the card Dell is recommending for its servers is the Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit Server Adapter. I suspect that Novell is using 1GB Ethernet. Would you be able to give me any advice or tips/tricks in implementing 1GB Ethernet?
Ethernet Exasperated in England
A.
Dear Exasperated: If you are using NetWare 6 or 5.x, the drivers for the Intel LAN cards you mention are included. The file names are CE1000.lan v3.21 July 20, 2001 for NetWare 6 and CE1000.lan v2.19 May 12, 2000 for NetWare 5.x. Here at Novell, for the most part things have just worked for us. With over 5000 users, we've never come close to taxing them as far as the Ab-ender knows.
We have had the Intel Pro/1000 cards (fiber based) in a majority of our Dell servers for some time and have had no problems with NetWare 6. Unfortunately all of our production servers have been upgraded to NetWare 6, so I can't give you a report about NetWare 5.x right now.
One thing you may want to note: if you are using a PCI LAN card, the PCI bus can impose a limit, keeping throughput below 400Mbps on a 32-bit PCI bus.
* Originally published in Novell AppNotes
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