Hello Jeremy, I have two CV860As (Neo case). I also was faced with this question, to buy the Intel NICs or the Realteks. I decided on the Realteks because a) they are used in slews of embedded systems, like the Snapgears: (http://www.cyberguard.com/products/firewall/SG_Family/), and b) the Intels are available few models.
Occasionally we run into packets not making it to certain parts of our network. But I don't believe at all this is a problem with the nics. It has to do with a flaky proxyarp/bridged wireless radio configuration that caused problems even before I stuck the CV860s in. Though, overall we have fewer problems now. Anyhow, my overall experiences have been very positive. The CV860As boot up quickly and don't lockup in any strange ways. If you plan to use squid I'd opt for 512MB RAM since it's pretty cheap from Lex. Also, you may want to flash your CV860A with the non-pxe boot rom to avoid a significant bootup delay. Unfortunately you can't disable pxe in the bios, it's either burned-in, or not. I'd consider going with a CV863A. It's not much more and it has four nics and two PCMCIA slots. But it doesn't have a PS2 port so you will have to go with a USB keyboard or use a serial console. To use a USB keyboard you will have rebuild the kernel because leaf/bering does not support USB input devices. Currently I am testing a CV863A. My biggest complaint is the video card uses at least 16MB system RAM, whereas the CV860A can use only 2MB. I have the PCMCIA services working (though I haven't tested anything other than listening for beeps and auto-loading of drivers). If you don't need a very fast system (and who does, for most fw/routing needs) consider the soekris boards: http://www.soekris.com/bundles.htm. Others can tell you about these. I will eventually get my hands on one. The price is good too. -cpu __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click ------------------------------------------------------------------------ leaf-user mailing list: leaf-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user SR FAQ: http://leaf-project.org/pub/doc/docmanager/docid_1891.html
