# Help me pick a NIC



## leebrown66 (Sep 18, 2016)

I am going to have to build a 1gb/s router by about the end of the year and need some help choosing a NIC.

I anticipate 2 radios facing the ISP which can do about 400mb/s each and another 2 radios facing another site of mine which will probably get 600mb/s each.  In the middle is my main site.

I plan (after some testing) to use OSFP to equal-path balance routes over the radios at both links.
I'll purchase new hardware for this and expect roughly to do this:


```
ISP --radio 1-- 1000Base-LX -- FreeBSD -- 1000Base-LX -- radio 3 -- Offsite
ISP --radio 2-- 1000Base-LX -- FreeBSD -- 1000Base-LX -- radio 4 -- Offsite
                                  |
                                  | copper gigabit
                               LAN
```

Ideally I'm looking to get a 1U server, 4 ports of fiber (1000Base-LX) and 1 or 2 ports of copper GbE.

Most of the searching I've done I can come up with mostly 1000Base-SX cards.  I am happy, even prefer SFP provided they are not vendor-locked.

Anybody have experience with something similar and care to recommend a card or cards.


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