Could it be that the timing behavior of this driver (r8169) exhibits some other problem for example with tcp/ip? The transfer rates given in the bug report were for cifs file access. Other systems with forcedepth or b44 drivers give miserable throughput figures occasionally too. Only the r8169 driver always has poor performance (with etch). Please feel free to close the bug, something is wrong but maybe not with the r8169 driver. jpf