Re: adding eth1

[Nathan E Norman <nnorman@incanus.net>]

On Sat, Mar 01, 2003 at 10:57:56AM +0100, Rudy Gevaert wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 02:53:33PM -0600, Nathan E Norman wrote:
> > First, I have to mention that I hate rtl8139 cards :-)  However, if it
> > works for you ...
> 
> Why?

The source code for the driver used to have a big blurb explaining how
the design for the cards really sucked.  I see they've removed that, I
suppose to be more politically correct :-)

FreeBSD still has the comments though; check out

  http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/pci/if_rl.c?rev=1.56&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup&only_with_tag=HEAD

Another URL:

  http://www.fefe.de/linuxeth/

Finally, there's personal experience.  I tend to build more servers
than desktops, so I've seen these cards freak out on numerous
occasions with high traffic loads.  I've seen cards that refused to
work in certain machines.  I've seen cards that refused to work once
you tried to use more than one of them in the same machine.  On and on
it goes.  I finally got to the point where it did not matter that the
cards are cheap financially; they're too cheap quality-wise to be
worth the trouble.  I just use tulip cards whenever I can find them
(though I've got some natsemi cards here too; so far so good).  I used
to use 3Com exclusively but they are expensive and I had some problems
with those too (autonegotiation with Cisco stuff, mostly).

Of course, YMMV.  If you like rtl8139s, don't let me hold you back
:-)  At least we have choices.

-- 
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
  Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
  It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
          -- William Pitt