Differences between a soft network card and a hard network card

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Ethernet interfaces can be divided into the protocol layer and the physical layer.

The protocol layer is composedMAC (media access layer) ControllerSingle module implementation.

The physical layer consists of two parts,Namely, the physical layer and transmitter. The common Nic chips integrate Mac and PHY into one chip. However, currently, many nanqiao chips on the Main Board contain Ethernet MAC control functions, but do not provide physical layer interfaces. Therefore, an external PHY chip is required to provide an Ethernet access channel. This type of PHY network chip is commonly known as the "soft Nic chip". The commonly used PHY function chips include rtl8201bl and vt6103.

Common hard network card models:

RealTek's rtl81 ** series are hard NICs, such as rtl8111b, rtl8101e, rtl8100c,Rtl8111e.

88e8053 of Marvell (region.

Vt6105 of via (Wei Sheng.

Common soft network card models:

RealTek rtl8201cl.

The88e1116.

Vt6103l of via (Weisheng.

Vsc8201rx of Vitesse (witch)