Welcome to HowTo! The premier Linux information resource center.
____________________________________

H HOWTO 's 

Contrib
(Submitted Documentation)
FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions)
Links
(Links page)
IRC Information
(IRC Page)
ISPs
(Linux Friendly ISPs)
Book Store
(Books through Amazon.com)
RFC Index
(Request For Comments)
Man Pages
(Linux Manual Pages)
LUGs
(Linux User Group Listing)

12. Network adapters

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, http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/, for detailed descriptions of various cards.

12.1 Supported

Ethernet

For ethernet cards with the DECchip DC21x4x family the "Tulip" driver is available. More information on this driver can be found at http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/tulip.html.

• 3Com 3c501 - ``avoid like the plague'' (3c501 driver)
• 3Com 3c503 (3c503 driver), 3c505 (3c505 driver), 3c507 (3c507 driver), 3c509/3c509B (ISA) / 3c579 (EISA)
• 3Com Etherlink III Vortex Ethercards (3c590, 3c592, 3c595, 3c597) (PCI), 3Com Etherlink XL Boomerang (3c900, 3c905) (PCI) and Cyclone (3c905B, 3c980) Ethercards (3c59x driver) and 3Com Fast EtherLink Ethercard (3c515) (ISA) (3c515 driver)
  Newer versions of this drivers are available at http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
  Avoid the 3c900 card when possible as the driver is not functioning well for this card.
• 3Com 3ccfe575 Cyclone Cardbus (3c59x driver)
• 3Com 3c575 series Cardbus (3c59x driver) (ALL PCMCIA ??)
• AMD LANCE (79C960) / PCnet-ISA/PCI (AT1500, HP J2405A, NE1500/NE2100)
• AT&T GIS WaveLAN
• Allied Telesis AT1700
• Allied Telesis LA100PCI-T
• Allied Telesyn AT2400T/BT ("ne" module)
• Ansel Communications AC3200 EISA
• Apricot Xen-II / 82596
• Cabletron E21xx
• Cogent EM110
• Crystal Lan CS8920, Cs8900
  http://www.cirrus.com/private/drivers/ethernet/edrivers.html
• Danpex EN-9400
• DEC DE425 (EISA) / DE434/DE435 (PCI) / DE450/DE500 (DE4x5 driver)
• DEC DE450/DE500-XA (dc21x4x) (Tulip driver)
• DEC DEPCA and EtherWORKS
• DEC EtherWORKS 3 (DE203, DE204, DE205)
• DEC QSilver's (Tulip driver)
• Digi International RightSwitch
• Fujitsu FMV-181/182/183/184
• HP PCLAN (27245 and 27xxx series)
• HP PCLAN PLUS (27247B and 27252A)
• HP 10/100VG PCLAN (J2577, J2573, 27248B, J2585) (ISA/EISA/PCI)
  More information at http://cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/100vg.html
• ICL EtherTeam 16i / 32 EISA
• Intel EtherExpress
• Intel EtherExpress Pro
• KTI ET16/P-D2, ET16/P-DC ISA (work jumperless and with hardware-configuration options)
• Macromate MN-220P (PnP or NE2000 mode)
• NCR WaveLAN
• NE2000/NE1000 (be careful with clones)
• Netgear FA-310TX (Tulip chip)
• New Media Ethernet
• PureData PDUC8028, PDI8023
• SEEQ 8005
• SMC Ultra / EtherEZ (ISA)
• SMC 9000 series
• SMC PCI EtherPower 10/100 (Tulip driver)
• SMC EtherPower II (epic100.c driver)
• Sun LANCE adapters (kernel 2.2 and newer)
• Sun Intel adapters (kernel 2.2 and newer)
• Schneider & Koch G16
• Western Digital WD80x3
• Zenith Z-Note / IBM ThinkPad 300 built-in adapter
• Znyx 312 etherarray (Tulip driver)

ISDN

• Linux ISDN WWW page
  This page seems to be gone ??
• ISDN4Linux tools are available from ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/isdn4linux/v2.0

• 3Com Sonix Arpeggio
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/network/sonix.tgz
• ASUSCOM Network Inc. ISDNLink 128K PC adapter (HiSax)
• AVM A1 (HiSax)
• Combinet EVERYWARE 1000 ISDN
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/network/combinet1000isdn-1.02.tar.gz
• Compaq ISDN S0 (ISA) (HiSax)
• Creatix PnP S0 (HiSax)
• Dr. Neuhaus Niccy PnP/PCI (HiSax)
• Dynalink IS64PH (HiSax)
• Eicon.Diehl Diva 2.0 ISA and PCI (S0 and U interface, no PRO version) (HiSax)
• Eicon.Diehl Diva Piccola (HiSax)
• Elsa Microlink PCC-16, PCF, PCF-Pro, PCC-8 (HiSax)
• ELSA QuickStep 1000/1000PCI/3000 (HiSax)
• HFC-2BS0 based cards (HiSax)
• IBM Active 2000 (ISA) (act2000)
• ICN ISDN cards (icn)
• Ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH MIC 16 (ISA) (HiSax)
• ITK ix1-micro Rev.2 (HiSax)
• Octal PCBIT (pcbit)
• Sedlbauer Speed Card (HiSax)
• Teles SO-8/SO-16.0/SO-16.3/SO-16.3c/SO-16.4 and compatible ones (HiSax)
• Traverse Technologie NETjet PCI S0 (HiSax)
• USR Sportster internal TA (HiSax)

Frame Relay

• Emerging Technologies Inc Synchronous Adapters ( http://www.etinc.com)
  • ET/5025 (1 port, 8-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025-16 (2 ports, 16-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025-25 (2 ports, 16-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025pq (4 ports, PCI)

Wireless

• ZCOM WL2420 ISA
  Product information can be found at http://www.zcom.com.tw. Object file kernel drivers are available at www.boerde.de/~matthias/airnet/zcom_v12

X25

• Emerging Technologies Inc Synchronous Adapters ( http://www.etinc.com)
  • ET/5025 (1 port, 8-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025-16 (2 ports, 16-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025-25 (2 ports, 16-bit ISA)
  • ET/5025pq (4 ports, PCI)

Pocket and portable adapters

• For more information on Linux and use of the parallel port, go to the Linux Parallel Port Home Page http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html or http://www.torque.net/parport/. Check Appendix C for a complete list of supported parallel port devices (excluding printers)

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

TokenRing

• Any IBM tokenring card not using DMA
• IBM Tropic chipset cards
• Madge TokenRing OCI 16/4 Mk2

FDDI

• DEC DEFEA (EISA) / DEFPA (PCI) (kernel 2.0.24 and later)

Amateur radio (AX.25)

• Gracilis PackeTwin
• Ottawa PI/PI2
• Most generic 8530 based HDLC boards

PCMCIA cards

• See Appendix B for complete list or the webpages of David Hinds at http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html

12.2 Alpha, Beta drivers

Ethernet

• Racal-Interlan NI5210 (i82586 Ethernet chip). Improved support in kernel 2.2 and newer
• Racal-Interlan NI6510 (am7990 lance chip). Starting with kernel 1.3.66 more than 16Mb Ram is supported.
• Racal-Interlan PCI card (AMD PC net chip 97c970) ??

ISDN

• SpellCaster's Datacomute/BRI, Telecomute/BRI (ISA) (sc)

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/

Wireless

• Proxim RangeLan2 7100 (ISA) / 630x (OEM mini-ISA)
  http://www.komacke.com/distribution.html

12.3 Unsupported

• IBM PCI Token Ring cards (all of them) ??
• Sysconnect / Schneider & Koch Token Ring cards (all of them)