> I would defiantly stick with PCIe for 5 NICs. Additionally Realtek > NICs don't offer the best performance and their drivers are hit or > miss. The Supermicro board has Intel PCIe NICs onboard and a PCIe > expansion slot. This should give you full performance depending on the > Atom processor. It really comes down to if you are just moving packets > or needing to do packet inspection The daughterboard I pointed to contains Intel 3 Gigabit chips. By the way, the OP never told us what would be the intended use for the firewall he needs.