[Gllug] Cheap Linux NIC

Jim Bailey jim at freesolutions.net
Mon Oct 7 08:51:14 UTC 2002


On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 09:13:36AM +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
> On Mon 07 Oct, Tushar Joshi wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > I'll second the rtl8139, it's all I use actually.
> > 
Realtek cards are brilliant value but they lack some of the features of
NICs like the Intel pro such as PXE (the ability to perform network
boots on diskless nodes).  This aside within there limitations they are
a very reliable card and I have had some good throughput on them.

>    I saw a report that the earlier RTL8039 had a fixed, non random, retry
> period after a collision which could cause trouble if there were two similar
> cards on a network. Does this still apply?
>
I have had no problems with the 8139 in this respect but I understand
there may be problems with multi-homed hosts running multiple 8139 NICs,
maybe someone with more knowledge of this could jump in and put me
right.

Peace Jim

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