Dell Intel Ethernet I350 Dual-Port 1GbE Network Card

Dell I350 Dual-Port NIC — Two Gigabit Ethernet Ports for PowerEdge Servers

The Dell I350 dual-port NIC delivers two independent Gigabit Ethernet connections in a single low-profile PCIe adapter. It is built on the Intel I350 controller, a well-established 1GbE platform with mature driver support and a long track record in enterprise server environments. Where a single onboard port provides no failover path, the dual-port design allows one link to carry production traffic and the second to act as a standby — or both to be teamed for aggregate throughput with automatic link failover.

The Intel I350 driver is included in current releases of Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Server and VMware ESXi without requiring a separate download. Deployment is straightforward for South African IT teams managing rack servers remotely.

Teaming Configurations and VLAN Use

The two ports on the Dell I350 dual-port NIC support IEEE 802.3ad LACP teaming and 802.1Q VLAN tagging at the hardware level. LACP active-active teaming provides both bandwidth aggregation and automatic failover. Active-passive teaming provides failover only, with no switch configuration required. VLAN tagging at the hardware level reduces CPU overhead for trunk port traffic between multiple isolated network segments.

In smaller South African server deployments, this dual-port NIC frequently supplements the onboard LOM ports. Each gets a dedicated physical Ethernet path. Management traffic and production or storage traffic each get a dedicated physical path. iSCSI storage traffic benefits from the I350’s hardware iSCSI offload. This reduces the CPU cycles consumed by the storage protocol stack on the host.

Compared to the Quad-Port Variant

The Dell I350 dual-port NIC uses the same PCIe slot format as the quad-port version. Cost per port is lower. It suits deployments where two additional ports meet all current requirements. The quad-port option remains available for servers that later need higher port density.

Find all server network cards at Briggi Tech or confirm compatibility at Dell.