Aprotech Ethernet Cards

[Buck]

Has anyone used them? What are your impressions?
I'm looking at buy a lot of the AE310C 10/100 Mbps PCI Adapters with a Realtek Chipset.

Thanks for your comments.

BR

[Mercutio]

I've used I-don't-know how many different cards wuth a realtek chip. They're perfectly acceptable for your average workstation, just as Conexant's Winmodem chip or generations of S3 chips make acceptable hardware.

However, I far, far, far prefer to buy brand name NICs (Intel, 3Com, Linksys, DLink, SMC). I've seen generic NICs - same as any other card with that chip, right? - do things that are kind of goofy compared to their name-brand counterparts, llike spike segment traffic on machines that aren't being used, for long-ish periods of time (a minute or so).

Not a comforting thing. How much are you saving over a $10 Dlink card?

[Buck]

How much are you saving over a $10 Dlink card?


$6.00 saving - thanks for the input, these would be used in end user systems who are connecting to a DSL or Cable modem.

BR

[timwhit]

As long as they have good driver support, I don't think you will run into many problems...

[Tannin]

Mercutio has the sense of it, I think. We use Realtek NICs all the time (mostly A-Open branded but they are all much the same). We practically never have problems with them, and there are drivers for absolutely everything.

But there are situations where we insist on spending roughly four times as much and go with Intel. It all depends on the application. If your business depends on it, buy Intel (or some other brand of equivalent quality). If you just want to take your home PC to LANs and play some games, or if it's a light-duty network that isn't critical, a Realtek is just fine.

For your job, Buck, I think the Realteks will do just fine.

(PS: my six-station network has two important machines: the accounts server and the technical server, plus four not-very-important workstations. As you'd guess from the above, I have two $100 Intel network cards, and four $25 Realteks.)