On 2004-04-26, mips <anti@spam.gov> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 20:59:02 -0700
> Ted Unangst <tedu@stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>> i know i've shoveled gigabytes and gigabytes through rl nics without
>> any trouble. i can't actually recall anybody with a network problem
>> that was confirmed to be a realtek's fault. i've seen lots of posts
>> where people with rl nics had network trouble, but never a followup
>> to say swapping the nic solved the problem.

I've seen enough of those in the comp.unix.bsd.*.misc groups, and I do
recall those including followups.


>> in short, people have
>> heard they suck, and tell other people they suck, but no one has
>> experienced said suckage.
>
> I had troubles with 8139 at work and since they have been swapped with
> 3com gears these troubles disapeared. I also know people that had
> troubles with realtek cards too, so no it's not a myth.

Another datapoint; I had problems with realteks[1], like consistent
low throughput or random faillures. Some cards seem to be ok (when not
pounded on), some just fail when you look at them.

Add to that recommendations from people running large enough shops to
see scale differences and some technical discussion with people In The
Know of stuff low-level enough to see realteks have severe technical
limitations built-in.

If your time is worth nothing, realteks are cheap. If it's not, better
look for something that doesn't break as easily. The price difference
is offset by less downtime, time wasted and pissed off people.[2]

I like NICs that you can trample with data and they still survive.
Realteks do the trample thing themselves, but not the surviving.


[1] Not always entirely the hardware's fault, sometimes the software
sucks too. Given that the sucky software with different hardware
did suck somewhat less means the hardware is at least partially
responsible.

[2] Which is no excuse to overprice quality cards, but I digress.

--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .