I've had a similar problem in the past with multiple nics
of the same type (although that was in the rh5.2 and older days).
The problem seemed to be in the drivers in that they tended
to assume that they didnt need to look for multiple cards
at least not without help. adding the "ether=xxxxx" to the
command line seemed to solve the problem most of the time.
I also used static kernel drivers to rule out any possibility
of the modules being the problem since back then they were
failry new (and anyting that tends to be "automated" tends
to be buggy).

Anyway, more recent releases have gotten much better and
i rarely have problems with the kernel or drivers. Usually
the problem is damn PnP not being smart about assigning
resources. I dont care what the developers say, put a
fast SCSI on the same IRQ as an ethernet card and ftp at
full speed and you will get resource not avaiable errors.
Why cant new cpu's come with 24 or 32 IRQ's these days??
Is it that big of an issue to implement?

Buy quality cards with good driver support and you shouldnt
have a problem. I have an Intel EEpro100 PCI, a 3c509 10mb ISA,
and a 3c515 100mb ISA (with DMA) on my firewall and got
them all to coexist with little work.

Cheers

On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Dave Kleist wrote:

> Quick question:
> 
> Something in my feeble brain seems to remember reading something about 
> using two identical NIC cards in a box makes it more difficult to set up a 
> firewall.  Is this right or am I just mishmashing stuff in my brain?
> 
> As an aside, the box is a 486, and I'll be picking up two ISA NIC cards, 
> retail -- not my money, my employers-- probably the Dlink DE220 PCT cards 
> since I don't think I saw any others on the shelf.  I'm also going to take 
> a stab at installing Debian though it does not look like the net install 
> will be that bad, probably have more problems with creating the floppies 
> than anything else.
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> 
>     - Dave
> 
> Dave Kleist
> dkleist at acm.org
> "The covers of this book are too far apart."  - Ambrose Bierce
> 
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