This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------816C713C6F303F96D4DE6AAA Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> Hi there,I try to figure out which approach to use implementing a Linux router with 3 RealTek 8139 chipset based NIC's. There seems to be quite a lot confusion going on regarding 8139.o versus the concurring 8139too.o. I had some bad and frustrating experiences with the 8139too driver on a RH7.1 i386 system running kernel 2.4.9. I actually met problems with using multiple of these cards at one box ...
I noticed Linux 2.4.x ships the 8139too driver but there seem to be lots of people using Donald Beckers original rtl8139 driver. This leaves me with a couple of questions:
1) Which of the two drivers mentioned above is the preferred (and most stable) one on a Intel Linux 2.4.9 platform ??
2) Suppose Donald Beckers driver is the preferred one, which obstacles will I encounter trying to get things compiled and running on an i386 box using kernel 2.4.9 ??
3) Summarizing, which direction should I follow ??
Thanks a lot,
John Donath