[realtek] rtl8139 vs via-rhine : conclusion

[Gabriel Enescu]

Hi

I am submitting this last email in the hope that my modest experience
with a
RealTek based ethernet card will help improve the rtl8139 driver. For
short, my D-Link DFE 530 TX+ failed to get me an IP address over a ADSL
link while Windows NT (with the same  BIOS assigned settings) worked
fine. I replaced the card with a D-Link DFE 530 TX (notice the absence
of +) without changing anything else and used the via-rhine driver. It
works just fine. I know for fact that rtl8139 driver does work on some
friends' computers though. I merely have a general understanding of the
ethernet technology but my gut feeling is that some timeouts (or some
other wireline dependent parameters) may sometimes need to be adjusted
to work with a
long wire segment.

Gabriel Enescu