[beachstartup]

failure modes are all over the map. sometimes they just start dropping more and more packets, sometimes it "looks like it's working" but there's no layer 1 link light, sometimes it's incredibly high latency, sometimes the entire card just disappears from view.

this mostly happens with the on-board controllers. nics don't fail as often, but we do use high end nics (intel 10g and 4x 1g)

[EarthLaunch]

High-end consumer motherboards often include 2 integrated NICs. Over the last decade I've owned four and had one of the NICs fail after 2-3 years on every single motherboard. Glad to know it's endemic, and Danpat's explanation is fascinating.