Trusting network cards purchased from ebay

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xena

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Apr 10, 2013
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Hello, whats you opinion on trusting network cards purchased from ebay? Would you put such a network card in your router PC as main interface for connection to your ISP? I mean anybody from seller to manufacturer could temper with firmware...
I did buy "Broadcom BCM5751 Gigabit 10/100/1000M PCI-e Desktop Network Card NIC" several months ago, but now I get a little bit worried about this.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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Hello, whats you opinion on trusting network cards purchased from ebay? Would you put such a network card in your router PC as main interface for connection to your ISP?
I use Cisco ASR1001s for my home ISP connection, so I can't answer that part. :p

I've purchased new and used cards from eBay and various distributors (for new cards) and have not had any problems. That's not to say that problems don't exist, but they're unusual.
I mean anybody from seller to manufacturer could temper with firmware...

I did buy "Broadcom BCM5751 Gigabit 10/100/1000M PCI-e Desktop Network Card NIC" several months ago, but now I get a little bit worried about this.
Broadcom has firmware updates available for download. Internally, the Broadcom NICs are ARM CPUs with networking hardware, and if B57DIAG (or whichever one applies to your card) is happy with it, I'd say it was genuine.

You'd think that counterfeiting GigE cards would be about as productive as counterfeiting pennies (the US Government loses 50% on each one they make, as they cost $0.015 to make, and they make them in volume). But as the FTDI fakes show, there's somebody willing to counterfeit anything.

Another aspect to this is that if the manufacturers lock down a product with cryptographic signing, a bunch of users will complain that they're breaking things for the (usually) small percentage of users who want to tinker. I expect we'll see a lot more locked-down things as time goes on, unfortunately.
 

mb300sd

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Aug 1, 2016
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I'd stick with Mellanox cards if you can. If you're worried about tampering, just flash the firmware yourself on all the new ones. You probably want to anyway since cross-flashing can unlock features on cheaper cards and basically get a better card for free.
 

xena

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Apr 10, 2013
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Thx for tip on Diag tool. I downloaded broadcom desktop utility a run some test and its says everything is OK... :) Where I can find new firmware for my card? I didnt see it in download section...
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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Where I can find new firmware for my card? I didnt see it in download section...
That is a good question. I haven't looked since the BCM5708 era, and the "follow the bouncing ball" of corporate ownership seems to have changed since, as most OEM download sites say "QLogic (formerly Broadcom)" but the QLogic download page says "Cavium" at the top, and the Cavium homepage says "Marvell Completes Acquisition of Cavium", so your guess is as good as mine. You're probably fine getting the firmware from an OEM that doesn't modify the firmware (Lenovo seems like a good bet).
 

xena

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Apr 10, 2013
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You're probably fine getting the firmware from an OEM that doesn't modify the firmware (Lenovo seems like a good bet).[/QUOTE said:
Thx for tip.