On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Timothy L. Jones wrote:
> I don't know what to tell you - This chipset has been rock solid for me.
> [...]
> In my experience, they're dirt cheap, and they work great. I have bought
> dozens over the years under at least 3 or 4 different brand names, and have
> always used Linux with them. I even have 2 or 3 spares at the moment.
If you're talking about the RealTek 8139, it's junk (unless the chip has
been updated drastically while I wasn't paying attention).
However, it's difficult to judge the quality of an ethernet controller
until you put it under load. Since most people use about 5% or less of
their Ethernet capacity, problems rarely surface on home networks with
even the worst chipsets. If you're buying something for Grandma's PC at
home, it probably doesn't matter.
But as soon as you start pushing those things closer to wire rate, they'll
get flaky. Firewalls, routers, fileservers, and so on all do much better
with decent Ethernet cards.
If you care about having a good Ethernet controller, I recommend primarily
the Intel 825xx chips in their various forms (EEPRO/100, etc.) and the DEC
TULIP (comes in many forms from many vendors). Some of 3Com's stuff is
okay, some of it really sucks. I haven't had much experience with the
smaller vendors like VIA and Adaptec.
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