NICs for firewall Question

[slacker_x]

I am going to make an old 486 into a debian firewall box. The only thing I need are a couple NICs. Should I get 2 of the same model, or get 2 that are different?

[Antipop]

Just to keep yourself sane get two different ones. I've got a 3Com 3C509b and a Linksys NC100 in my router right now. I highly recommend any 3Com card, I've never had a problem with one of them. Ever Linux distro (or Windows version for that matter) has detected and run them perfectly. You can get Linksys cards for $15 from just about anywhere nowadays and they work fine with the tulip driver. If your driver is out of date Linksys even provides a link to where you can get one that works on the floppy that comes with the card.