[realtek] 8139 trouble

[janne]

i have 3 rtl8139 based nics, 2 on the first machine that is masquerading
the second, which has one. i used these for about six months and didn't
experience any serious problems, but just lately i've been getting some
serious headaches with them. i started experiencing regular hangs, several
times a day with the 2.2 series kernel drivers which i recall being
version 1.07.. i came here and read about similar problems, and updated my
drivers to version 1.12. but the hangs remain.

restarting the interfaces, reloading the modules _sometimes_ help, most
of the times it has required a reboot to get things going again. the hangs
occur under heavy load, which seems to be the case with most hangs
reported here.

i would like to know if there is some known cause for this, and/or some
workaround to lessen the probability of the hangs or get things going
without a reboot (like i said, taking the interface down/up doesn't seem
to work nearly all the time, i also tried pinging with big packets as
someone mentioned, but without success). any hints and pointers would be
greatly appreciated. is there any work being done on this?

	janne.
	  sniff@xxx.ath.cx