10. Network adapters

Contents of this section

Ethernet adapters vary greatly in performance. In general the newer the design the better. Some very old cards like the 3Com 3C501 are only useful because they can be found in junk heaps for $5 a time. Be careful with clones, not all are good clones and bad clones often cause erratic lockups under Linux. Read the Ethernet HOWTO for detailed descriptions of various cards.

10.1 Supported

Ethernet

3Com 3C501 - ``avoid like the plague''
3Com 3C503, 3C505, 3C507, 3C509/3C509B (ISA) / 3C579 (EISA)
AMD LANCE (79C960) / PCnet-ISA/PCI (AT1500, HP J2405A, NE1500/NE2100)
AT&T GIS WaveLAN
Allied Telesis AT1700
Ansel Communications AC3200 EISA
Apricot Xen-II
Cabletron E21xx
DEC DE425 (EISA) / DE434/DE435 (PCI)
DEC DEPCA and EtherWORKS
HP PCLAN (27245 and 27xxx series)
HP PCLAN PLUS (27247B and 27252A)
HP 10/100VG PCLAN (ISA/EISA/PCI)
Intel EtherExpress
Intel EtherExpress Pro
NE2000/NE1000 (be careful with clones)
New Media Ethernet
Racal-Interlan NI5210 (i82586 Ethernet chip)
Racal-Interlan NI6510 (am7990 lance chip) - doesn't work with more than 16 megs RAM
PureData PDUC8028, PDI8023
SEEQ 8005
SMC Ultra
Schneider & Koch G16
Western Digital WD80x3
Zenith Z-Note / IBM ThinkPad 300 built-in adapter

Pocket and portable adapters

AT-Lan-Tec/RealTek parallel port adapter
D-Link DE600/DE620 parallel port adapter

Slotless

SLIP/CSLIP/PPP (serial port)
EQL (serial IP load balancing)
PLIP (parallel port) - using ``LapLink cable'' or bi-directional cable

ARCnet

works with all ARCnet cards

Token Ring

IBM Tropic chipset cards

Amateur radio (AX.25)

Ottawa PI/PI2
Most generic 8530 based HDLC boards

10.2 Others

Ethernet

3Com Demon Ethercards (3C592, 3C597 (100 mbps)) (EISA)
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
3Com Vortex Ethercards (3C590, 3C595 (100 mbps)) (PCI)
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
DEC 21040/21140 ``Tulip'' / SMC PCI EtherPower 10/100
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/tulip.html
HP J2585 (PCI) / HP J2573 (ISA) (ATT2MDx1 / 100VG)
http://cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov:80/linux/drivers/100vg.html

ISDN

Linux ISDN WWW page
http://www.ix.de/ix/linux/linux-isdn.html
3Com Sonix Arpeggio
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/network/sonix.tgz
Combinet EVERYWARE 1000 ISDN
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/patches/network/combinet1000isdn-1.02.tar.gz
Diehl SCOM card
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/network/isdndrv-0.1.1.tar.gz
ICN ISDN / Teles ISDN / Creatix AVM ISDN cards
ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/isdn4linux/

ISDN cards that emulate standard modems or common Ethernet adapters don't need any special drivers to work.

PCMCIA cards

See Appendix B for complete list

ATM

Efficient Networks ENI155P-MF 155 Mbps ATM adapter (PCI)
http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/

Frame Relay

Sangoma S502 56K Frame Relay card
ftp://ftp.sovereign.org/pub/wan/fr/

10.3 Unsupported

Xircom adapters (PCMCIA and parallel port) are not supported.

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