>I can't really recommend Broadcom cards on FreeBSD.  I run 5.4 and 6.0
>on some Dell 2550 servers with built in bge cards, and they aren't
>extremely stable.  Performance sucks too, in comparison to an Intel. 
>Others who have done much more extensive testing than I have, have
>noted a 50+% speed improvement, depending on hardware, from switching
>from bge cards to Intel em (pro/1000) cards.  This isn't just true of
>FreeBSD either, I tested the bge's in 2550's at around 400-500 Mbps in
>Windows 2000 and 2003, and FreeBSD 5.4 and 6.0.  Intel Pro/1000's in
>the same box can exceed 800 Mb.

I'm using HP servers with Broadcom gigabit cards and don't have
problems.

I run them on FreeBSD, Linux and windows 2003 and got speeds of ~
900Mbit/s (iperf statistics)
Even with a P3 1,3Ghz cpu (serverboard with 133Mhz pci-x slots)

I also don't have crashes and run m0n0wall on it without any problems.

The only thing I experienced is if your system is playing like a
forwarding device it is a good thing to stick with the same type of
cards for the whole system and not mixing bge, fxp or em

J.

-- 
Jonathan De Graeve
Network/System Administrator
Imelda vzw
Informatica Dienst
015/50.52.98
jonathan dot de dot graeve at imelda dot be

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Always read the manual for the correct way to do things because the
number of incorrect ways to do things is almost infinite
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