I have a pentium 166MHZ 128 Meg Ram p/c setup as my Router/Firewall using 2....3com 10Mbs NIC's Eth0 is connected to the DSL modem and Eth1 is connected to the internal Lan are there any tweaks that can be done for optimium performace on these cards
Or should I invest in two 10/100 Mbs pci network cards
in addition Im using a 8 port hub that attaches to 5- Win 98 client p/c's

Chances are that your DSL modem is only going to pump 10MB/s max, so a faster NIC won't do much for you.

A _better_ NIC could do some trick for you if you get one that can remove some of the load from your CPU - but I'm still not convinced that the linux drivers are completely up to snuff yet. Some examples are 3Com 3c59x/90x (including the B and C series) which boast 'Parallel tasking'. I have not actually measured the difference, but my biased opinion is that my 3C905-TX seems quite a bit faster (maybe just more immediate) that any D-Link/Linksys I've ever used.

Intel's newer server NICs which (in Win NT/2K only so far) can process _some_ crpyto tasks show some promise but it's up to Intel to show some support. (nb: I haven't looked for new drivers yet...)

Also noteworthy is that Intel seems to be creeping out of the Networking arena. They dumped their print server hardware and no vendor I've talked to knows what (if anything) is coming down the pipe for new NICs/Switches/Routers. Take it for what it's worth.

True. Cable and DSL modems operate at 10MB/s, so a faster NIC on that side won't help. However- if your hub is 100MB-capable, the NICs on your internal network should be as well.

Moving 4Gb of data from one box to the next accross the network can get to be a real pain at 10 base-T. However, unless this was a rather pricy hub, its probably only a 10 Base-T itself. Also, as far as 10 Base-T cards go, you've got some of the best ever made.

Cheers,

Finegan