Weird vmnic numbering

After installing new Intel quad port ethernet cards in vSphere ESXi machines, I had to figure out which physical port matched to which vmnic number. Strange though it may sound, the mapping turned out to be (top to bottom as seen on the back of the card).

A: vmnic2
B: vmnic3
C: vmnic0
D: vmnic1

However, the PCI layout of most quad port cards makes this easier to understand: a quad port card is implemented as two dual port cards behind a PCI bridge chip. While enumerating the PCI bus, the VMkernel can find one bus first, enumerate the devices on it, then find the second bus, and enumerate the devices there.
In this case, the bottom bus was found first, and vmnic's on it were counted top to bottom (vmnic0 and vmnic1). Then the top bus was found, and again vmnic's on it were counted top to bottom (vmnic2 and vmnic3).

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